Unable to Retrieve UTF-8 Accented Characters from Access via PDO_ODBC

Background

When accessing an Access database using PDO_ODBC, non-standard characters may return incorrect values. This article explores the underlying issue and provides a comprehensive solution using COM with ADODB Connection and Recordset objects.

The Problem with PDO_ODBC

PDO_ODBC does not natively handle UTF-8 encoding for text retrieved from an Access database. This causes a mismatch between the actual character encoding and the encoding assumed by the browser or PHP. As a result, non-standard characters are garbled or displayed incorrectly.

Incomplete Fixes

Some attempts to fix the issue involve converting the returned text to UTF-8 using functions like utf8_encode() or mb_convert_encoding(). While these may resolve issues with certain character sets like Windows-1252, they do not fully address the problem for all Unicode characters.

The Complete Fix Using ADODB

For complete UTF-8 support, it is recommended to use COM with ADODB Connection and Recordset objects. Here's how to implement this solution:

<code class="php">// Connect to the database using ADODB with UTF-8 encoding
$con = new COM("ADODB.Connection", NULL, CP_UTF8);
$con->Open($connStr);

// Open a Recordset and execute the query
$rst = new COM("ADODB.Recordset");
$sql = "SELECT Team FROM Teams";
$rst->Open($sql, $con, 3, 3);  // adOpenStatic, adLockOptimistic

// Iterate through the Recordset and retrieve the characters
while (!$rst->EOF) {
    $s = $rst->Fields("Team");
    echo $s . "<br/>\n";
    $rst->MoveNext();
}

// Close the Recordset and connection
$rst->Close();
$con->Close();</code>

By using this approach, all characters will be correctly encoded as UTF-8 and displayed properly.

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