How to Fix Black Diamonds with Question Marks in PHP Output?

Fixing Output Displaying Black Diamonds with Question Marks in PHP

When working with database sources in PHP, it's possible to encounter text containing double-byte characters that may appear as black diamonds with a question mark (?) when displayed. This is likely due to encoding discrepancies between the original text and the output.

Encoding Conversion Approach:

1. Determine Input Encoding: The first step is to verify the original encoding of the input text.

2. Re-Encoding Output Header: Based on the confirmed input encoding, you can set an HTTP header to instruct the browser to use the correct encoding when rendering the output:

   header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1");  // Example for Latin-1 encoding

3. Meta Tag Encoding: Alternatively, you can add a meta tag to the output:

   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">  // Example for Latin-1 encoding

Alternative Conversion Options:

1. Database Encoding: Explore reading data from the database using a different encoding, such as UTF-8.

2. Iconv Conversion: Use the iconv() function to perform character encoding conversion within PHP:

   $convertedText = iconv("ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8", $text);  // Convert from Latin-1 to UTF-8

The above is the detailed content of How to Fix Black Diamonds with Question Marks in PHP Output?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!