Arabic Language Encoding Problem in PHP and ODBC(Sybase)

Question

I am a PHP Developer and Recently I develop a web site using PHP and I connect to a Syabse Database using ODBC.

My database connection is ok and I can display the data in my web pages but I face a problem when arabic data is displayed as it is viewed as squares and not understanding symbols.

I can not change the Database language encoding and it is correct as some other arabic data is displayed well.

I tried the same configuration used in that web page but it does not work too.

I read many realted problems and I tried some solutions and I read about UTF-8, ISO, Windows and Unicode langauge Encodings and I tried to change the HTML Meta tag to display the arabic words but the problem is not solved.

I think my PHP file language Encoding itself may have a problem. Can I change the PHP file language Encoding ? How to do that if it is possible ?

Is there any solution to dispaly Arabic coming from Database well in PHP web pages ? It is a boring problem :(

I will appreciate any hint or suggestion to solve that problem but please mention your reference and put and example if it is available.

Thanks in Advance...

Answer 1

Just changing the Meta tag isn't enough.

Assuming you want to change your environment to UTF-8, you need to make sure that the following is UTF-8 encoded:

• The database tables
• The database connection.
• The page's encoding (in the Meta tag, or preferably the content-type header)

the PHP file's encoding is irrelevant, unless it contains non-ASCII content itself. In that case, you need to adjust its encoding as well, usually in your IDE's "Save as" dialog.