Value of subject line changes while inserting in MYSQL table

Question

Actual String:

$sub"=?UTF-8?Q?=e2=99=a3?= Styles to =?UTF-8?Q?=e2=99=a3?="
UTF value is decoded using:
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mb_internal_encoding('utf-8');
$subjectvalue=mb_decode_mimeheader($sub);

when I echoed $subjectvalue desired value displayed on my browser ,desired value is:

♣ Styles to  ♣

Issue: when I tried to insert value of $subjectvalue, value inserted looks like

♣ Styles to ♣

why value inserted is not as echoed on browser. How to manage and insert value of subject line ,if it is encoded.

Answer 1

When you connect to your MYSQL database try running just after connecting

SET names 'utf8'

I've prepared the whole test:

1) I've created database named testencoding

2) I've created sample table:

SET SQL_MODE = "NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO";
SET time_zone = "+00:00";

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `sample` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `value` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ;


ALTER TABLE `sample`
 ADD PRIMARY KEY (`id`);


ALTER TABLE `sample`
MODIFY `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,AUTO_INCREMENT=3;

You can import it into database using phpmyadmin

3)

I've created test PHP script:

<?php
$sub = "=?UTF-8?Q?=e2=99=a3?= Styles to =?UTF-8?Q?=e2=99=a3?=";

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mb_internal_encoding('utf-8');
$subjectvalue=mb_decode_mimeheader($sub);
$subjectvalue2 = '会意字 / 會 huìyìzì ';
echo $subjectvalue."<br />";
echo $subjectvalue2."<br />";


$link = mysqli_connect("localhost","root","","testencoding");
mysqli_query($link,"SET NAMES 'utf8'");
mysqli_query($link,"INSERT INTO sample(`value`) VALUES('".mysqli_real_escape_string($link,$subjectvalue)."')");
mysqli_query($link,"INSERT INTO sample(`value`) VALUES('".mysqli_real_escape_string($link,$subjectvalue2)."')");


$result = mysqli_query($link, "SELECT * FROM sample");
echo "<br /><br />Data from database<br /><br />";
while ($data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $data['id'].' '.$data['value']."<br />";
}

4) Results are:

In phpmyadmin:

In PHP script:

So to sum up, everything works as expected. Data are inserted as they should be, data in phpmyadmin and those read from database via php are the same as they were inserted