PHP accent problem, Mysql

Question

I have a very strange problem with my PHP code.

All my charset are correct

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta charset="utf-8">

I already use the code below to correct accent problems

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
mysql_query('SET character_set_connection=utf8');
mysql_query('SET character_set_client=utf8');
mysql_query('SET character_set_results=utf8');

When I send the form to Mysql it writes to the database correctly (latin1_swedish_ci database).

Everything appears perfectly on the screen.

The problem appears when I make a str_replace. When I take the URL variable by the $_GET method (which is with correct accent) and put it in the str_replace function, the function does not recognize the letter with accent and does not change. Now, if I write in my code the same word ( <?php $str = "joão" ?> for example ), hence the function recognizes the accent.

The problem also happens when the code compares a word with what is in the database. If he compares a letter with an accent that is in the code with a word that has an accent in the bank, he does not recognize it (then returns no result).

I’m using str_replace to search with REGEXP, so my code takes an accent word, swaps it for an equal word without accent (here I already have the error) and then creates a string with REGEXP to search.

Please help that I no longer know where to look!

Answer 1

Database latin1_swedish_ci should not be used with utf8, if not you will stay in the gambiarra to solve the problem.

Bank latin1, then use on the page <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

This problem occurs because the accented characters of utf8 are totally different from latin1, so for the bank are two different things.

If you will use pages in utf-8, then use the bank in utf-8, recommend reading this:

• Which UTF-8 "collate" is the most suitable for Web (multi-language)

• Doubt with charset=iso-8859-1 and utf8

Answer 2

An alternative way is that if we’re using PDO, the fourth parameter at the time of instantiating the PDO class is super important for special character situations.

//Fazemos a conexão com nosso banco de dados

$dsn = "mysql:dbname=nome_do_banco;host=localhost"; 
$dbuser = "root"; //usuário do banco
$dbpass = ""; //senha do banco
try
{
    //Instanciamos a classe PDO passando como parâmetro os dados de conexão pegos acima
     $pdo = new PDO($dsn, $dbuser, $dbpass,array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES \'UTF8\'')); 
    //Esse quarto parâmetro é para corrigir problemas de acentuação

}
catch(PDOException $e)
{   
   //Se der erro na conexão, nós estourando esse Catch e é exibida essa mensagem junto com a mensagem do erro
   echo "A conexão falhou: ".$e->getMessage();
   exit;
}

That is the parameter I refer to:

array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES \'UTF8\'')

• In addition, of course, to leave the COLLATE and CHARSET of the database and the tables of the database configured in the correct way.