How Can I Fix UTF-8 Character Corruption When Using file_get_contents()?

file_get_contents() Corruption of UTF-8 Characters: A Resolution

When utilizing file_get_contents() to retrieve HTML content with UTF-8 encoding, users may encounter an issue where special characters such as ľ, š, č, and ž are rendered incorrectly. This results in gibberish characters like Å, ¾, and ¤ being displayed instead.

The problem lies within the default encoding used by file_get_contents(). To resolve it, one can explicitly specify the desired encoding in the function call. However, saving the retrieved HTML to a file and printing it with UTF-8 encoding also proves ineffective, indicating that the broken data is retrieved from the source itself.

A solution that has proven successful is to perform a multi-byte conversion on the retrieved HTML string. Here are the steps involved:

1. Detect the current encoding of the HTML string using mb_detect_encoding($html, 'UTF-8', true).
2. Convert the string to UTF-8 using mb_convert_encoding($html, 'UTF-8', mb_detect_encoding($html, 'UTF-8', true)).
3. Finally, convert the UTF-8 string to HTML entities using mb_convert_encoding($html, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'UTF-8').

By implementing these steps, the retrieved HTML string will be properly converted, allowing UTF-8 characters to be displayed correctly.

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