Json_encode binary string

Question

I'm getting a list of people through a file_get_contents request and parsing that list.

While looping through them, if person passes some conditions I'll need to grab that persons data and creating a body for a post request.

But some of the values I'm getting contain different types of special characters. Like ü, æ, ø and so on. Whenever this happens the string is delivered as a binary string. Like: b"tæst". When these characters are not present it's delivered like "test".

array:14 [
  0 => "23468"
  1 => "Firstname"
  2 => b"Læstname"
  3 => "[email protected]"
  4 => "center"
  5 => "2016-11-29"
  6 => ""
  7 => ""
  8 => ""
  9 => ""
  10 => "Level"
  11 => "54698523"
  12 => ""
  13 => ""
]

After parsing the list, this is for example an array for one user. So when I wan't to do a string containing the users fullname I've tried something like:

htmlspecialchars($employee[1].' '.$employee[2], ENT_COMPAT,'ISO-8859-1', true);

But I need to returned this as json, and when I json_encode this it just returns false. I believe I've narrowed it down to the special character being responsible for it without knowing why.

So I suppose I'm asking what's happening here with the binary string in the json_encoding and is there a way I can convert that or do some other workaround to handle these special characters as well?

I've tried to figured that out too but haven't been able to. Is there a way I can find that or do I need to ask the data supplier about that? — gerre
– gerre, Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 14:27
Just download the file, open it (for example) with notepad++ and have a look to the encoding menu :) — Martin P.
– Martin P., Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 14:32
Well It's not a downloadable file I think. I just have a url that export and spits out this list as content. I think it's just csv and that's what I get through my file_get_contents. — gerre
– gerre, Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 14:38
How did you test it. What command spits out that format? fwiw a "binary" string is exactly the same as a normal string in php. There is no difference. It's an old artifact — PeeHaa
– PeeHaa, Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 15:17

gerre · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-01 12:31:43Z

3

Suddenly it worked just utf-8_encode the entire string after running the file_get_contents and that solved the issue.

answered Dec 1, 2016 at 12:31

gerre

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