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phphtmlutf-8character-encodingiso-8859-1

charset utf-8 does not display é, á, , í , or ú

I have a database that stores some unusual characters input by visitors: e.g. é, á, , í , and ú.

My html 5 web page displays ? instead of the character when I use 

<meta charset="utf-8">

but when I use 

<meta charset="ISO-8859-1">

the characters are displayed correctly.

However, when I specify the latter charset the W3C validator spits out an error message:

Error: Bad value ISO-8859-1 for attribute charset on element meta: iso-8859-1

Is there a way to get the characters displaying correctly and get a W3C validation, or am I expecting too much?

Regards

Tog

The suggested "already answered" question does not apply because: 1) My php version is 5.4, not 5.5 (2) I do not understand the answer which seems to be aimed at people who have a greater depth of knowledge than me.

Solution

  • OK I think I have the answer now. Thanks to deceze for pointing me to: http://kunststube.net/frontback/

    I first checked the database and the fields are set to a collation of; utf8_general_ci, which I presume is correct.

    I now have:

    <meta charset="utf-8">

    at the top of the page and the dbase connection is now:

    $dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=$hostname;dbname=$dbname; charset=utf8;", $username, $password);

    Adding the charset in there appears to have fixed the problem and the characters now display correctly, whilst the page passes W3C validation.

    Many thanks for the help.

    Tog