(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
utf8_encode — Converts a string from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8
This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 8.2.0. Relying on this function is highly discouraged.
This function converts the string string from the ISO-8859-1 encoding to UTF-8.
Note:
This function does not attempt to guess the current encoding of the provided string, it assumes it is encoded as ISO-8859-1 (also known as "Latin 1") and converts to UTF-8. Since every sequence of bytes is a valid ISO-8859-1 string, this never results in an error, but will not result in a useful string if a different encoding was intended.
Many web pages marked as using the
ISO-8859-1character encoding actually use the similarWindows-1252encoding, and web browsers will interpretISO-8859-1web pages asWindows-1252.Windows-1252features additional printable characters, such as the Euro sign (€) and curly quotes (“”), instead of certainISO-8859-1control characters. This function will not convert suchWindows-1252characters correctly. Use a different function ifWindows-1252conversion is required.
stringAn ISO-8859-1 string.
Returns the UTF-8 translation of string.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.2.0 | This function has been deprecated. |
| 7.2.0 | This function has been moved from the XML extension to the core of PHP. In previous versions, it was only available if the XML extension was installed. |
Example #1 Basic example
<?php
// Convert the string 'Zoë' from ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8
$iso8859_1_string = "\x5A\x6F\xEB";
$utf8_string = utf8_encode($iso8859_1_string);
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
?>The above example will output:
5a6fc3ab
Note: Deprecation and alternatives
This function is deprecated as of PHP 8.2.0, and will be removed in a future version. Existing uses should be checked and replaced with appropriate alternatives.
Similar functionality can be achieved with mb_convert_encoding(), which supports ISO-8859-1 and many other character encodings.
<?php
$iso8859_1_string = "\xEB"; // 'ë' (e with diaeresis) in ISO-8859-1
$utf8_string = mb_convert_encoding($iso8859_1_string, 'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1');
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
$iso8859_7_string = "\xEB"; // the same string in ISO-8859-7 represents 'λ' (Greek lower-case lambda)
$utf8_string = mb_convert_encoding($iso8859_7_string, 'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-7');
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
$windows_1252_string = "\x80"; // '€' (Euro sign) in Windows-1252, but not in ISO-8859-1
$utf8_string = mb_convert_encoding($windows_1252_string, 'UTF-8', 'Windows-1252');
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
?>The above example will output:
c3ab cebb e282acOther options which may be available depending on the extensions installed are UConverter::transcode() and iconv().
The following all give the same result:
<?php
$iso8859_1_string = "\x5A\x6F\xEB"; // 'Zoë' in ISO-8859-1
$utf8_string = utf8_encode($iso8859_1_string);
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
$utf8_string = mb_convert_encoding($iso8859_1_string, 'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1');
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
$utf8_string = UConverter::transcode($iso8859_1_string, 'UTF8', 'ISO-8859-1');
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
$utf8_string = iconv('ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8', $iso8859_1_string);
echo bin2hex($utf8_string), "\n";
?>The above example will output:
5a6fc3ab 5a6fc3ab 5a6fc3ab 5a6fc3ab