How to Fix PHP Chinese Character Encoding Issues: Practical Guide and Code Samples

M66 2025-07-10

Overview of Chinese Character Encoding Issues in PHP

In PHP web development, Chinese character display issues—commonly known as encoding problems or 'garbled text'—frequently occur, especially during data storage, retrieval, or output. If character sets are not properly handled, the result is unreadable content that negatively impacts user experience and page readability.

Common Causes of Chinese Character Garbling

There are several typical reasons behind PHP encoding issues involving Chinese characters:

Inconsistent database character set configurations
Missing or incorrect encoding conversion after reading data
Improper charset settings in the HTML document itself

Fixing Database Encoding Issues

When connecting to the database, explicitly setting the charset to UTF-8 helps prevent issues with storing or retrieving Chinese data.


// Set database connection to UTF-8
$mysqli = new mysqli("host", "username", "password", "dbname");
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");

// Insert Chinese data into the database
$data = "中文数据";
$data = $mysqli->real_escape_string($data);
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES ('$data')";
$mysqli->query($query);

Encoding Conversion When Reading Data

After retrieving data from the database, if encoding issues occur, use encoding conversion functions to fix them.


// Retrieve data from the database
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT column_name FROM table_name");
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();

// Convert to UTF-8 encoding
$data = mb_convert_encoding($row['column_name'], "UTF-8", "auto");

// Output to the web page
echo $data;

Correct Charset Setting in HTML

Make sure the HTML document is set to use UTF-8. You can do this by including the following meta tag in the section:


<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Conclusion

By addressing these three areas—database connection character set, encoding conversion after data retrieval, and correct HTML charset settings—you can effectively resolve Chinese character encoding issues in PHP. This ensures a smoother user experience and prevents common pitfalls during development.

If you're facing similar issues, try applying the methods outlined above. With careful configuration, you can quickly eliminate encoding problems and display Chinese characters correctly on your PHP web pages.