String Functions
PHP Manual

utf8_encode

Converts a string from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8

Warning

This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 8.2.0. Relying on this function is highly discouraged.

Description

string utf8_encode(string $string)

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-8859-1 character encoding actually use the similar Windows-1252 encoding, and web browsers will interpret ISO-8859-1 web pages as Windows-1252. Windows-1252 features additional printable characters, such as the Euro sign (€) and curly quotes (“ ”), instead of certain ISO-8859-1 control characters. This function will not convert such Windows-1252 characters correctly. Use a different function if Windows-1252 conversion is required.

Parameters

string

An ISO-8859-1 string.

Return Values

Returns the UTF-8 translation of string.

Changelog

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.

Examples

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

Notes

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
e282ac

Other 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

See Also

  • utf8_decode
  • mb_convert_encoding
  • UConverter::transcode
  • iconv