PHP Tutorials - Tutorial Addendum - Non ASCII Characters as Cord Literals

This affiliate explains:

    

    
• Basic Rules
  
      



    
• French Characters in Cord Literals - UTF-8 encoding
  
      



    
• French Characters in Cord Literals - ISO-8859-1 Encoding
  
      



    
• Chinese Characters in Cord Literals - UTF-8 Encoding
  
      



    
• Chinese Characters in Cord Literals - GB2312 Encoding
  
      



    
• Characters of Assorted Languages in Cord Literals
  
      



    

Basic Rules

    

As you see from the antecedent chapters, if PHP scripts are complex in a Web based application,

    

they are consistently acclimated abaft a Web server. PHP scripts are accepted to accomplish HTML abstracts and

    

pass them aback to the Web server. There are about four means non ASCII characters can get into the HTML document

    

through PHP scripts: a) Access them as cord literals; b) Accept from HTTP request; c) Retrieve them from files;

    

d) Retrieve them from a database.

    

In this chapter, we will apply on how to cover non ASCII characters in PHP scripts as cord literals.

    

Here are the accomplish complex in this scenario:

    

 

    
A1. Key Sequences from keyboard

    
      |

    
      |- Argument editor

    
      v

    
A2. PHP File

    
      |

    
      |- PHP CGI engine

    
      v

    
A3. HTML Document

    

Based on my experience, actuality are some basal rules accompanying to those steps:

    

1. You haveto adjudge on the appearance encoding action to be acclimated in your PHP software file.

    

For alotof of the languages, you accept two options, a: use a encoding action specific to that language;

    

b: use a Unicode schema. For example, you can use either GB2312 (a simplified Chinese appearance schema)

    

or UTF-8 (a Unicode appearance schema) for Chinese characters. My advancement acclimated to be "a". But today,

    

I am suggesting "b", because Unicode action can abutment all characters of all languages.

    

2. From move "A1" to "A2", you charge baddest acceptable argument editor that supports the encoding action you accept

    

decided. The end ambition of this move is simple - characters in cord literals haveto be stored in the PHP

    

file using the absitively encoding schema.

    

Don t beneath appraisal the adversity akin of this step. It could be actual frustrating,

    

because alotof computer keyboards abutment alphabetic belletrist only. You may accept to use some accent specific

    

input software to construe alphabetic belletrist into accent specific characters. The editor sometimes may

    

also abundance characters in anamnesis in one encoding schema, and action you altered encoding action if saving

    

files to harddisk.

    

3. Cord data blazon is authentic as a arrangement of bytes in PHP, like C language. This is altered than

    

Java language, area cord data blazon is authentic as a arrangement of Unicode characters. Cord literals in

    

PHP are aswell taken as sequences of bytes. This is a nice feature. It allows us to access non ASCII characters

    

in about any encoding schema.

    

4. All PHP congenital cord functions accept that strings are sequences of bytes. For example, strlen()

    

returns the amount of bytes of the accustomed string, not the amount of characters of a specific language.

    

To administer strings as sequences of characters, we charge to use Multibyte Cord functions, mb_*().

    

5. From move "A2" to "A3", HTML abstracts are generated from PHP software mainly through the print() function.

    

The print() action will accurately archetype every bytes from the defined cord to HTML documents. This guarantees

    

that any non ASCII characters encoded in any encoding action will be affected accurately to the HTML document.

    

Again, this is altered than JSP pages, area strings will be adapted into bytes beck based a specified

    

encoding schema, if you are using appearance based achievement beck functions.

    

6. If you do wish to catechumen from one encoding action to addition encoding action during the print() action

    

call, you can use mb_output_handler as the alarm aback action on the achievement buffer: ob_start("mb_output_handler").

    

(Continued on next part...)