Transform project from windows-1256 to utf-8 charset, what's the right steps?

Question

I got a PHP & MySQL script that use windows-1256 charset, I now want to modify the whole script make it completely built on utf-8 charset. starting from mysql DataBase to PHP files.

what is the right steps to achive that's??!!

Note: I use non-Latin language in script (Arabic language).

Answer 1

On the database level, have a look at:

• Turning MySQL data in latin1 to utf8 utf-8
• PHP UTF-8 cheatsheet

As for your html pages, use this meta tag:

<meta charset=utf-8 />

And you can also use this header from php:

header('content-type: text/html charset=utf-8');

Or you might want to have a look at complete php-arabic solution here:

• http://www.ar-php.com/

Answer 2

I found such solution:

PHP & MySQL: Creating a website in your local language smoothly