Encoding issues ... windows-1255 to utf 8?

Question

Encoding convert from windows-1255 to utf-8 was asked before I know, but I'm still getting different results and I can't solve it.

The first issue is "does php iconv() or mb_convert_encoding() support windows-1255????" While testing, it returns several outputs (playing with the //ignore & //translate) but its not working well at all.

I was looking at mb_list_encodings() output and it doesn't include window-1255... playing and testing mb_detect_encoding() with an windows-1255 input (crawled from the net) doesn't return the good charset...

Answer 1

You should be able to just use strtr with an associative array of characters to convert (the data is available from MSDN, and converted into a PHP array below). Note that in this code, reserved byte values are replaced with the U+FFFD replacement character ("\xef\xbf\xbd").

function win1255ToUtf8($str) {
    static $tbl = null;
    if (!$tbl) {
        $tbl = array_combine(range("\x80", "\xff"), array(
            "\xe2\x82\xac", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xe2\x80\x9a", "\xc6\x92",
            "\xe2\x80\x9e", "\xe2\x80\xa6", "\xe2\x80\xa0", "\xe2\x80\xa1",
            "\xcb\x86", "\xe2\x80\xb0", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xe2\x80\xb9",
            "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
            "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xe2\x80\x98", "\xe2\x80\x99", "\xe2\x80\x9c",
            "\xe2\x80\x9d", "\xe2\x80\xa2", "\xe2\x80\x93", "\xe2\x80\x94",
            "\xcb\x9c", "\xe2\x84\xa2", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xe2\x80\xba",
            "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
            "\xc2\xa0", "\xc2\xa1", "\xc2\xa2", "\xc2\xa3", "\xe2\x82\xaa",
            "\xc2\xa5", "\xc2\xa6", "\xc2\xa7", "\xc2\xa8", "\xc2\xa9",
            "\xc3\x97", "\xc2\xab", "\xc2\xac", "\xc2\xad", "\xc2\xae",
            "\xc2\xaf", "\xc2\xb0", "\xc2\xb1", "\xc2\xb2", "\xc2\xb3",
            "\xc2\xb4", "\xc2\xb5", "\xc2\xb6", "\xc2\xb7", "\xc2\xb8",
            "\xc2\xb9", "\xc3\xb7", "\xc2\xbb", "\xc2\xbc", "\xc2\xbd",
            "\xc2\xbe", "\xc2\xbf", "\xd6\xb0", "\xd6\xb1", "\xd6\xb2",
            "\xd6\xb3", "\xd6\xb4", "\xd6\xb5", "\xd6\xb6", "\xd6\xb7",
            "\xd6\xb8", "\xd6\xb9", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xd6\xbb", "\xd6\xbc",
            "\xd6\xbd", "\xd6\xbe", "\xd6\xbf", "\xd7\x80", "\xd7\x81",
            "\xd7\x82", "\xd7\x83", "\xd7\xb0", "\xd7\xb1", "\xd7\xb2",
            "\xd7\xb3", "\xd7\xb4", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
            "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
            "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xd7\x90", "\xd7\x91", "\xd7\x92", "\xd7\x93",
            "\xd7\x94", "\xd7\x95", "\xd7\x96", "\xd7\x97", "\xd7\x98",
            "\xd7\x99", "\xd7\x9a", "\xd7\x9b", "\xd7\x9c", "\xd7\x9d",
            "\xd7\x9e", "\xd7\x9f", "\xd7\xa0", "\xd7\xa1", "\xd7\xa2",
            "\xd7\xa3", "\xd7\xa4", "\xd7\xa5", "\xd7\xa6", "\xd7\xa7",
            "\xd7\xa8", "\xd7\xa9", "\xd7\xaa", "\xef\xbf\xbd", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
            "\xe2\x80\x8e", "\xe2\x80\x8f", "\xef\xbf\xbd",
        ));
    }
    return strtr($str, $tbl);
}

I generated the above code with this PHP script:

function win1255ToUtf8($str) {
    static $tbl = null;
    if (!$tbl) {
        $tbl = array_combine(range("\x80", "\xff"), array(
            <?php

        function encodeString($str) {
            return '"' . preg_replace('/../', '\x$0', bin2hex($str)) . '"';
        }

        function codepointToUtf8($n) {
            return mb_convert_encoding(pack('V', $n), 'UTF-8', 'UTF-32LE');
        }

        $text = strip_tags( file_get_contents( 'http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305148.aspx') );
        preg_match_all('/([0-9A-F]{2}) = U\+([0-9A-F]{4})/', $text, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);

        $table = array_fill(0, 128, "\xef\xbf\xbd");
        foreach ($matches as $match) {
            $input = hexdec($match[1]) - 128;
            if ($input >= 0) {
                $table[$input] = codepointToUtf8(hexdec($match[2]));
            }
        }

        $buf = '';
        foreach ($table as $from => $to) {
            $buf .= encodeString($to) . ', ';
        }
        echo wordwrap(substr($buf, 0, -1), 68, "\n            "), "\n";

?>
        ));
    }
    return strtr($str, $tbl);
}