Hello Sir/Maam,

I need some help in a problem I am having with spanish special characters. A brief summary of what I am doing first. I have written a PHP script which fetches data from Google Spreadsheet using Zend Google PHP API. This data is then put into MySql database.

$row=$Col->getText(); //getText is the Google API that returns the value in the row.
print "$row"; // I print the content

But the problem is that some spanish characters such as ñer appear as ñer. Later on in the PHP code I go on to save these values in MySql. And even in the tables the same problem.Don't know where the problem is.

I tried various different things such as edit the PHP file and add:

mbstring.language = Neutral ; Set default language to Neutral(UTF-8) (default)
mbstring.internal_encoding = UTF-8 ; Set default internal encoding to UTF-8
mbstring.encoding_translation = On ; HTTP input encoding translation is enabled
mbstring.http_input = auto ; Set HTTP input character set dectection to auto
mbstring.http_output = UTF-8 ; Set HTTP output encoding to UTF-8
mbstring.detect_order = auto ; Set default character encoding detection order to auto
mbstring.substitute_character = none ; Do not print invalid characters
default_charset = UTF-8 ; Default character set for auto content type header
mbstring.func_overload = 7 ; All non-multibyte-safe functions are overloaded with the mbstring alternatives

Add in the below in MySql

init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci; SET NAMES utf8;'
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

Change Database and Table properties

ALTER DATABASE db_name
CHARACTER SET utf8
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_general_ci
DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci
;

ALTER TABLE tbl_name
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_general_ci
;

Call SETNAMES etc just after mysql open connection.

$q="SET NAMES 'utf8'";
$r=mysql_query($q);
mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8");

But nothing seems to work. Please help

Do you know what character set the google API uses? That would be a good first step to find out...

Also, what headers are you sending with the page? You should send a character set header (and it should be 'utf-8' based on your code), plus you can use a in the HTML.

Hope this helps,