PHP json_encode utf-8 issue on database

Question

I got a problem. I use json_encode and after I upload on a database. My files are in utf8 and my database too. But in my database there is some \u00e9 and I don't know why ...

EDIT :

There is a simple code :

$toast = array();
    for($i=0;$i<11;$i++)
        $toast[]='é';

    $toast = json_encode($toast);
    print utf8_decode($toast);

This doesn't work how can I print a simple array full of 'é' character...

EDIT 2 :

This code :

$toast = array();
    for($i=0;$i<11;$i++)
        $toast[]='é';

    $toast = json_encode($toast);
    print $toast;

OUTPUT:

["\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9","\u00e9"]

And I want :

["é","é","é","é","é","é","é","é","é","é","é"]

Answer 1

You can use JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE flag of json_encode (available since PHP 5.4):

$toast = json_encode($toast, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

Before PHP 5.4, you can use this snippet:

$toast = json_encode($toast);
$toast = preg_replace_callback('/\\\\u([0-9a-f]{4})/i', function($matches) {return mb_convert_encoding(pack('H*', $matches[1]), 'UTF-8', 'UTF-16');}, $toast);

As mb_convert_encoding() is not available on all installations, you can also use this dirty workaround:

$toast = array_map('htmlentities', $toast);
$toast = json_encode($toast);
$toast = html_entity_decode($toast);

But there is no problem with \uXXXX values - it just looks uglier.