How to Preserve Unicode Characters in PHP\'s json_encode Function?

JSON Encoding Unicode Characters

The PHP json_encode function conventionally encodes Unicode characters as hexadecimal entities to ensure readability by a wide range of clients. However, this behavior may not be desirable for handling text from various languages.

Solution for Preserving Unicode Characters

To retain Unicode characters in UTF-8 format, PHP 5.4.0 introduced the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option. This option prevents the conversion of Unicode characters to hexadecimal entities.

Example

The following code demonstrates the usage of the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option:

<code class="php">$text = "База данни грешка.";

$jsonString = json_encode($text, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

echo $jsonString;</code>

This will output:

"База данни грешка."

Additional Notes

• The JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option is supported by PHP 5.4.0 and later versions.
• To ensure compatibility with older versions of PHP, it's recommended to use the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option when dealing with Unicode data.
• The JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option only affects the encoding of Unicode characters. Other special characters will still be escaped.

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