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phpemailcharacter-encodingphpmailernon-english

non-English characters display issue in gmail, yahoo via phpMailer class

I use phpMailer (as of today version in GitHub) to send automatic smtp activation mails from my noreply@host.com.

I tried it in gmail and yahoo. Both interpreted the characters as shown below.

nice      unwanted (realized)
Ç    ->     Ç
ı    ->     Ä
ş    ->     Åž

mailing process order is:

  1. "sign page" (has the form, utf-8 encoded), then
  2. "assess_from_sign.php" (pure php without any encoding command. actual sending or failure process is here),then
  3. "inform page" (informs user for result)

my message in mail body starts with Dear $_POST['username']

What can I apply to $_POST['username'] variable in assess_from_sign.php page so even non-English characters seems exactly like in their own language.

note: all requests are redirecting to index.php page in my site and it has mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8"); command which applies to all pages.

thanks, regards

Solution

  • It's important that all aspects of the code is set to the same, specific charset. I recommend UTF-8 as you already started using, which covers most characters you'll ever need.

    Below you'll find a "checklist" of what should be set to UTF-8.

    • PHP header - this has to be put prior to any output to the browser, and should be put on the top of all your .php pages: header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

    • HTML header - this should also be in all your pages containing HTML, and it to be put inside the <head> tags: <meta charset=utf-8" />

    • PHPMailer Object - specify the charset of your PHPMailer object by adding
      $mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';, where $mail is the object itself.

    • File-encoding: The file itself should be converted to a UTF8 charset (specifically UTF8 w/o BOM). This varies a bit on what kind of texteditor your are using, but in Notepad++ it's Format -> Convert to UTF8 (w/o Byte Order Mark).

    There might be other aspects of your code that need to be set to an UTF8 charset (databases and such), but this should cover the mail-properties.

    You can also reference UTF-8 all the way through.