当使用PHP从MSSQL数据库读取时，Diaeresis显示为问号

Question

I have a bit of PHP that gets data from a MSSQL database and saves it to an array:

while($row = mssql_fetch_array($dbquery, MSSQL_NUM)) 
{
    $content = array(
        'something'         =>  $row[1],
        'something_else'    =>  $row[2]
        // etcetera
    );
}

(The reason why I write the data to an array like that is not relevant I think, but if you must know: it is because the data is parsed by ExpressionEngine (EECMS). The PHP code is part of a plugin I am developing and this is the easiest way to make the data available for use in ExpressionEngine tags.)

Some of the data in de MSSQL database contains punctuated characters, such as ë and é. The diaeresis (ë) are shown as question marks in the HTML. For instance, Cliënten is shown as Cli�nten.

The HTML is in UTF8: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

I cannot change anything in the MSSQL database. What is the best way, preferably in PHP, to fix this?

Answer 1

When you see question marks like that, it means your browser is having trouble understanding what the character the question mark has replaced is supposed to represent. Most likely, it is expecting utf8 character encodings and is not getting them.

Try running something like this on your array (after it's built) and see if that helps:

$content = array_map('utf8_encode', $content);

Basically you want to run the utf8_encode() function on all the strings that come out of the database since apparently they are not encoded as such in the database.

You could also run the utf8_encode function immediately before you output each variable. So something like:

<p><?php echo utf8_encode($content_row) ?></p>