How to work with two databases in utf-8 and iso-8859-1

Question

i have a MySQL database that is working with UTF-8 encoding and a VisualFox database (dbase) that works with ISO-8859-1.

I'am having tons of issues with encodings.

I wonder if is better to work with my html pages on iso-8859-1 or utf-8. It's better convert iso to utf8 or utf8 to iso?

Or maybe, should i work with utf8 on the website when the data is from the mysql database and iso when i'm working with data from the visualfox database? It's better mix or use only one codification.

I have a headache and thousand problems with the encoding, escaping, etc! Especially because of the lack of a good driver for odbc databases.

Finally, i wonder if i connect to mysql using iso-8859-1 codification i get the data in that codification instead of the utf8 that is stored the data?

Any tips?

Answer 1

Use UTF8 for flexibility.

Use the PHP utf8_encode() function to fix your data sync problems.