Last updated: Sat, 17 Jul 2004

XLI. iconv Functions

Introduction

This module contains an interface to iconv character set conversion facility. With this module, you can turn a string represented by a local character set into the one represented by another character set, which may be the Unicode charcter set. Supported character sets depend on the iconv implementation of your system. Note that the iconv function on some systems may not work as you expect. In such case, it'd be a good idea to install the GNU libiconv library. It will most likely end up with more consistent results.

Since PHP 5.0.0, this extension comes with various utility functions that help you to write multilingual scripts. Let's have a look at the following sections to explore the new features.

Requirements

You will need nothing if the system you are using is one of the recent POSIX-compliant systems because standard C libraries that are supplied in them must provide iconv facility. Otherwise, you have to get the libiconv library installed in your system.

Installation

To use functions provided by this module, the PHP binary must be built with the following configure line: --with-iconv[=DIR].

Note to Windows� Users: In order to enable this module on a Windows� environment, you need to put a DLL file named iconv.dll or iconv-1.3.dll (prior to 4.2.1) which is bundled with the PHP/Win32 binary package into a directory specified by the PATH environment variable or one of the system directories of your Windows� installation.

Runtime Configuration

The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.

Tablo 1. Iconv configuration options

Name	Default	Changeable
iconv.input_encoding	ICONV_INPUT_ENCODING	PHP_INI_ALL
iconv.output_encoding	ICONV_OUTPUT_ENCODING	PHP_INI_ALL
iconv.internal_encoding	ICONV_INTERNAL_ENCODING	PHP_INI_ALL

For further details and definition of the PHP_INI_* constants see ini_set().

Resource Types

This extension has no resource types defined.

Predefined Constants

Since PHP 4.3.0 it is possible to identify at runtime which iconv implementation is adopted by this extension.

Tablo 2. iconv constants

Name	Type	Description
ICONV_IMPL	string	The implementation name
ICONV_VERSION	string	The implementation version

Not: Writing implementation-dependent scripts with these constants is strongly discouraged.

Since PHP 5.0.0, the following constants are also available:

Tablo 3. iconv constants available since PHP 5.0.0

Name	Type	Description
ICONV_MIME_DECODE_STRICT	integer	A bitmask used for iconv_mime_decode()
ICONV_MIME_DECODE_CONTINUE_ON_ERROR	integer	A bitmask used for iconv_mime_decode()

��indekiler
iconv_get_encoding -- Retrieve internal configuration variables of iconv extension
iconv_mime_decode_headers -- Decodes multiple MIME header fields at once
iconv_mime_decode -- Decodes a MIME header field
iconv_mime_encode -- Composes a MIME header field
iconv_set_encoding -- Set current setting for character encoding conversion
iconv_strlen -- Returns the character count of string
iconv_strpos -- Finds position of first occurrence of a needle within a haystack.
iconv_strrpos -- Finds the last occurrence of a needle within the specified range of haystack.
iconv_substr -- Cut out part of a string
iconv -- Convert string to requested character encoding
ob_iconv_handler -- Convert character encoding as output buffer handler

iconv_get_encoding

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Last updated: Sat, 17 Jul 2004

add a note User Contributed Notes
iconv Functions

nospam at nihonbunka dot com
15-May-2008 08:40


iconv does not convert to sjis tildes unless you do something like this



<?PHP 

$string = 'where are the (~) (~) tildes?'; // This is what we start off with, you can put any string in here that contains problematic characters in utf8 format

echo ('this is what we start with = '.$string.'<BR />'); //print string at start

$conv_str = iconv('utf-8','shift-jis'.'//TRANSLIT',$string); 

echo ('this is not working = '.$conv_str.'<BR />'); //Just to show that this is not working.



$rstring = preg_replace ('/~/','1bytetilde',$string);   //replace before conversion

echo ('this is modified string here = '.$rstring.'<BR />'); //This is the modified string



$conv_str2 = iconv('utf-8','shift-jis'.'//TRANSLIT',$rstring); //convert modified string

$rereplace=chr(126); //$rereplace is now a one byte tilde in shift_jis

$rerstring = preg_replace ('/1bytetilde/',$rereplace,$conv_str2); //rereplace with tildes

echo ('this is the correct result = '.$rerstring.'<BR />'); //the correct result

?>

Erel Segal - Rent a Brain
25-Mar-2007 12:32


Note that my mysql_iconv will not translate correctly the Hebrew dotting symbols (Niqqud) - they will be converted into question marks.





Here is a straightforward (and not very efficient) solution:





<?php


function utf8_to_windows1255($utf8) {


    $windows1255 = "";


    $chars = preg_split("//",$utf8);


    for ($i=1; $i<count($chars)-1; $i++) {


        $prefix = ord($chars[$i]);


        $suffix = ord($chars[$i+1]);


        //print ("<p>$prefix $suffix");


        if ($prefix==215) {


            $windows1255 .= chr($suffix+80);


            $i++;


        }


        elseif ($prefix==214) {


            $windows1255 .= chr($suffix+16);


            $i++;


        }


        else {


            $windows1255 .= $chars[$i];


        }


    }


    return $windows1255;


}


?>

Fabian Ketchup
13-Sep-2006 06:00


// Simple file translation.



$FileToconvert = "menu.xml";

$FileConverted = "menu2.xml";



echo "Converting $FileToconvert ...";



file_put_contents($FileConverted, iconv("ISO-8859-1","UTF-8",file_get_contents($FileToconvert))); 



echo "File converted in $FileConverted";

nod at mobi dot kz
17-Jul-2006 07:17


If you need convert string from Windows-1251 to 866. Some characters of 1251 haven't representation on DOS 866. For example, long dash -- chr(150) will be converted to 0, after that iconv finish his work and other charactes  will be skiped. Problem characters range in win1251 (128-159,163,165-167,169,171-174,177-182,187-190).



Use this:



//$text  -  input text in windows-1251

//$cout  -  output text in 866 (cp866, dos ru ascii)



for($i=0;$i<strlen($text);$i++) {

    $ord=ord($text[$i]);

    if($ord>=192&&$ord<=239) $cout.=chr($ord-64);

    elseif($ord>=240&&$ord<=255) $cout.=chr($ord-16);

    elseif($ord==168) $cout.=chr(240);

    elseif($ord==184) $cout.=chr(241);

    elseif($ord==185) $cout.=chr(252);

    elseif($ord==150||$ord==151) $cout.=chr(45);

    elseif($ord==147||$ord==148||$ord==171||$ord==187) $cout.=chr(34);

    elseif($ord>=128&&$ord<=190) $i=$i; //нет представления данному символу

    else $cout.=chr($ord);

}

andrej009
16-Mar-2006 04:22


There's one more special german character: ß (sometimes displayed as Ϋ)



so: case 159: $out .= "ß";break;

08-Nov-2005 12:05


But this is a very slow method to convert this:



// function to change german umlauts into ue, oe, etc.

function cv_input($str){



Better try this:

$tr = array(chr(xyz) => '�', chr(160) => ' '); // Just a simple example, put all your characters in there

$string = strtr($string, $tr);

Christophe Lienert
27-Sep-2005 02:09


In addition to Godfather's note below, you may find this function useful just as well. 



// function to change german umlauts into ue, oe, etc. 

function cv_input($str){

      $out = "";

      for ($i = 0; $i<strlen($str);$i++){

           $ch= ord($str{$i});

           switch($ch){

                case 195: $out .= "";break;     

                case 164: $out .= "ae"; break; 

                case 188: $out .= "ue"; break; 

                case 182: $out .= "oe"; break; 

                case 132: $out .= "Ae"; break; 

                case 156: $out .= "Ue"; break; 

                case 150: $out .= "Oe"; break;

                default : $out .= chr($ch) ;

           }

      }

      return $out;

}

The Godfather
15-Dec-2004 05:36


With this function you can translate the german Symbols from the character set UTF-8 in windows-1252. 



function convert_text($str){

  $out = '';

  for ($i = 0; $i<strlen($str);$i++){

   $ch = ord($str{$i});

   switch($ch){

         case 252: $out .= chr(129);break; //u Umlaut

         case 220: $out .= chr(154);break;//U Umlaut 

         case 228: $out .= chr(132);break;//a Umlaut  

         case 196: $out .= chr(142);break;//A Umlaut 

         case 214: $out .= chr(153);break;//O Umlaut  

         case 246: $out .= chr(148);break;//o Umlaug 

         case 223: $out .= chr(225);break;//SZ 

         default : $out .= chr($ch) ;

   }

  }

  return $out;

}

tokiee at hotmail dot com
19-Aug-2004 01:40


iconv now has been built-in, at least in PHP >= 5.0.1 for win32. You don't have to modify php.ini for this. Actually you should not. And clearly, libiconv does not need to be installed.

thierry.bo
23-Dec-2003 02:26


Windows users.



Personaly I leaved all php dlls in \php\dlls\ directory, just adding this path to my system path, and iconv.dll supplied with php 4.3.2 works fine, also leaving supplied php_iconv.dll in my \php\extensions\ directory. This was working fine with Apache and Omnihttpd server I use.



As soon I installed IIS on the same server, php complained about not finding php_iconv.dll in the extensions directory. In fact PHP with IIS loads all extensions in my \php\extensions directory correctly, except php_iconv.dll. 

Although iconv.dll is in my system path, the only way to load php_iconv.dll was to copy iconv.dll file in \%winnt\system32 directory. With other servers, iconv.dll can be in anywhere in the system path.

13-Sep-2002 05:23


I'm not sure how recent version of

glibc 2.x Slackware 7.x/8.x comes with, but

it's very likely that it comes with glibc 2.2.x.

In that case, you don't have to bother at all to

install libiconv in /usr/local. iconv(3) in glibc 2.2.x

is very good (thanks to Ulrich Drepper and

Bruno Haible. the latter is the author of libiconv).

libiconv is very handy for those outdated/non-standard-compliant Unix 

and non-Unix systems that don't have 

sufficiently good iconv(3) in their C library.

elk at NOSPAMmodel-fx dot com
25-Jul-2002 08:39


To compile libiconv under Slackware 7.0 or 8.0 without errors (either with the apache module of PHP or the CGI version), you must specify the full path of the libiconv installation.



Exemple :



       --with-iconv=/usr/local

add a note

iconv_get_encoding

hw_api->userlist

Last updated: Sat, 17 Jul 2004

XLI. iconv Functions

Introduction

Requirements

Installation

Runtime Configuration

Resource Types

Predefined Constants

See Also