How do I get fgetcsv() in PHP to work with Japanese characters?

Question

I have the following data being generated from a google spreadsheet rss feed.

いきます,go,5 
きます,come,5 
かえります,"go home, return",5 
がっこう,school,5 
スーパー,supermarket,5 
えき,station,5 
ひこうき,airplane,5 

Using PHP I can do the following:

$url = 'http://google.com.....etc/etc';
$data = file_get_contents($url);

echo $data; // This prints all Japanese symbols

But if I use:

$url = 'http://google.com.....etc/etc';
$handle = fopen($url);

while($row = fgetcsv($handle)) {
    print_r($row); // Outputs [0]=>,[1]=>'go',[2]=>'5', etc, i.e. the Japanese characters are skipped
}

So it appears the Japanese characters are skipped when using either fopen or fgetcsv.

My file is saved as UTF-8, it has the PHP header to set it as UTF-8, and there is a meta tag in the HTML head to mark it as UTF-8. I don't think it's the document it's self because it can display characters through the file_get_contents method.

Thanks

Answer 1

I can't add comment to the answer from Darien

I reproduce the problem, after change a locale the problem was solved. You must install jp locale on server before trying repeat this.

Ubuntu Add a new row to the file /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local

ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8

And run command

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Or

sudo locale-gen

Debian Just execute "dpkg-reconfigure locales" and select necesary locales (ja_JP.UTF-8)

I don't know how do it for other systems, try searching by the keywords "locale-gen locale" for your server OS.

In the php file, before open csv file, add this line

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'ja_JP.UTF-8');