Convert arrays into UTF-8 ? PHP JSON

Question

i have multidimensional arrays generated by PHP with data from database ,but i have chars like "č ć š đ ž" and when i try to output that in json he just returns null , i did some reading about that ,and it says that JSON is only working with UTF-8. So how can i convert those arrays in UTF-8 ? but i still need arrays at the and?

here is code of my script

     $sql_main = mysql_connect(DB_HOST, DB_UNM, DB_PSW);
    ($sql_main)? mysql_select_db(DB_NM) : mysql_error();

    $APP_URL_ACCESS = $_GET['app_access_key'];

    $sql_app = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM app_sys WHERE APP_OW_C='$APP_URL_ACCESS'") or die(mysql_error());

    if(mysql_num_rows($sql_app)==1){

        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_app)){
        $APP_UA_ID          = $row['APP_UA_ID'];
        $APP_NM             = $row['APP_NM'];
        $APP_H_DMN          = $row['APP_H_DMN'];
        $APP_H              = $row['APP_H'];
        $APP_H_DB_UNM       = $row['APP_H_DB_UNM'];
        $APP_DB_NM          = $row['APP_DB_NM'];
        $APP_H_DB_PSW       = $row['APP_H_DB_PSW'];
        $APP_H_DB_SRV       = $row['APP_H_DB_SRV'];
        $APP_ACTIVE         = $row['APP_ACTIVE'];
        $APP_OW_C           = $row['APP_OW_C'];


    }
    $ROW_APP[] = array(
                        'APP_UA_ID' => $APP_UA_ID,
                        'APP_PERMISSION' => $APP_ACTIVE,
                        'APP_KEY' => $APP_OW_C);
    $APP_ARRAY[''] = $ROW_APP;



    ($APP_ACTIVE == '1')? $sql_connect_app = mysql_connect($APP_H_DB_SRV, $APP_H_DB_UNM, $APP_H_DB_PSW) && mysql_select_db($APP_DB_NM): $_MSG = "Application Is Not Active"; 

    $sql_news = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news  ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 10") or die(mysql_error());
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_news, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
            //$display_json['data'] = array(
                //'id' => $row['id'],
    //          'title' => $row['title'],
        //      'story' => $row['story'],
        //      'img' => $row['img'],
            //  'author' => $row['author'],
                //'datetime' => $row['datetime'],
                //'shorten_story' => substr($row['story'], 0, 150) . '...'); */

            $ROW_APP_DATA[] = $row; 
    //

}

$sql_news = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM actual  ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 10") or die(mysql_error());
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_news, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
        /*$display_json['data'] = array(
            'id' => $row['id'],
            'title' => $row['title'],
            'story' => $row['story'],
            'img' => $row['img'],
            'author' => $row['author'],
            'datetime' => $row['datetime'],
            'shorten_story' => substr($row['story'], 0, 150) . '...'); */
            $ROW_APP_THIRDPART[] = $row;    
    //

}

$JSON_ARRAY_APP['application'] = $ROW_APP;
$JSON_ARRAY_DATA_1['news'] = $ROW_APP_DATA;
$JSON_ARRAY_DATA_2['actual'] = $ROW_APP_THIRDPART;
$JSON_ARRAY_DATA['data'] = array_merge($JSON_ARRAY_DATA_1, $JSON_ARRAY_DATA_2);
$JSON_OUTPUT = array_merge($JSON_ARRAY_APP, $JSON_ARRAY_DATA);
echo json_encode($JSON_OUTPUT);

}else{
exit(); 
}

Answer 1

I've found iconv to be the best method of converting a character set to UTF-8. You can make use of PHP's array_walk_recursive to work with multidimensional arrays:

$array = array(); // This is your multidimensional array

array_walk_recursive($array, function(&$value, $key) {
    if (is_string($value)) {
        $value = iconv('windows-1252', 'utf-8', $value);
    }
});

You can change windows-1252 to whichever character set you're converting from.