PHP Class Encoding featuring popular \ForceUTF8\Encoding::toUTF8() function --formerly known as forceUTF8()-- that fixes mixed encoded strings.
If you apply the PHP function utf8_encode() to an already-UTF8 string it will return a garbled UTF8 string.
This class addresses this issue and provides a handy static function called \ForceUTF8\Encoding::toUTF8().
You don't need to know what the encoding of your strings is. It can be Latin1 (iso 8859-1), Windows-1252 or UTF8, or the string can have a mix of them. \ForceUTF8\Encoding::toUTF8() will convert everything to UTF8.
Sometimes you have to deal with services that are unreliable in terms of encoding, possibly mixing UTF8 and Latin1 in the same string.
Update:
I've included another function, \ForceUTF8\Encoding::fixUTF8(), which will fix the double (or multiple) encoded UTF8 string that looks garbled.
use \ForceUTF8\Encoding;
$utf8_string = Encoding::toUTF8($utf8_or_latin1_or_mixed_string);
$latin1_string = Encoding::toLatin1($utf8_or_latin1_or_mixed_string);
also:
$utf8_string = Encoding::fixUTF8($garbled_utf8_string);
Examples:
use \ForceUTF8\Encoding;
echo Encoding::fixUTF8("Fédération Camerounaise de Football\n");
echo Encoding::fixUTF8("Fédération Camerounaise de Football\n");
echo Encoding::fixUTF8("Fédération Camerounaise de Football\n");
echo Encoding::fixUTF8("Fédération Camerounaise de Football\n");
will output:
Fédération Camerounaise de Football
Fédération Camerounaise de Football
Fédération Camerounaise de Football
Fédération Camerounaise de Football
Edit your composer.json file to include the following:
{
"require": {
"neitanod/forceutf8": "dev-master"
}
}