json_encode function: special characters

Question

Elements of an array containing special characters are converted to empty strings when encoding the array with json_encode:

$arr = array ( "funds" => "ComStage STOXX®Europe 600 Techn NR ETF", "time"=>....); $json = json_encode($arr); 

After JSON encoding the element [funds] is null. It happens only with special characters (copyright, trademark etc) like the ones in "ComStage STOXX®Europe 600 Techn NR ETF".

Any suggestions?

Thanks

UPDATE: This is what solved the problem prior to populating the array (all names are taken from the db):

$mysqli->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); 

Answer 1

The manual for json_encode specifies this:

All string data must be UTF-8 encoded.

Thus, try array_mapping utf8_encode() to your array before you encode it:

$arr = array_map('utf8_encode', $arr); $json = json_encode($arr);  // {"funds":"ComStage STOXX\u00c2\u00aeEurope 600 Techn NR ETF"} 

For reference, take a look at the differences between the three examples on this fiddle. The first doesn't use character encoding, the second uses htmlentities and the third uses utf8_encode - they all return different results.

For consistency, you should use utf8_encode().

Docs

• json_encode()
• utf8_encode()
• array_map()