asked on 12/15/2014

json_encode outputting pound sign as \u00a3

I'm performing a query on a database and encoding the results to json via json_encode.

The issue is that a pound sign £ is being outputted to the browser as '\u00a3'

Here's how I'm sending the json to the browser.

header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8;');
echo json_encode($this->response);

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Can someone tell me what's going wrong?

PHP

Last Comment

Chris Stanyon

12/16/2014

Chris Stanyon

12/15/2014

Nothing's wrong - you've set your encoding to UTF-8 which encodes the pound sign as u00a3 - it's working exactly as it should. If the page you're calling it from is also set to UTF8 then when you echo out the JSON result, you'll see the proper £ sign.

Ray Paseur

12/16/2014

Agree with Chris Stanyon. More on common Unicode issues here:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_11880-Unicode-PHP-and-Character-Collisions.html

SheppardDigital

12/16/2014

ASKER

Thanks.

What I don't understand is why the pound sign isn't rendering in the browser when I'm passing over a head to the browser to tell it the document is UTF-8?

Dave Baldwin

12/16/2014

Simple test page works in Firefox 34, Chrome, IE8, and Safari 5. Note the UTF-8 declaration in the page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>JS Unicode Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>JS Unicode Test</h1>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write("This is \u00a3 .");
// -->
</script>
</body>
</html>

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SheppardDigital

12/16/2014

ASKER

Hi Dave,

I'm outputting just json to the browser, so that it can be used by other applications so we can't wrap it in HTML tags.

This isn't really an issue now, as the mobile app developer who is working with the API confirms that iOS handles the UTF-8 fine.

Why it doesn't render properly in my browser I don't know.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Chris Stanyon

12/16/2014

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SheppardDigital

12/16/2014

ASKER

Thanks Ray, that explains in perfectly.

Dave Baldwin

12/16/2014

I'm outputting just json to the browser

There's your problem then. JSON is not valid HTML and if there is nothing on the page to support it like on my demo, it will be rendered in plain text with no recognition of UTF-8.

While I have pages that do send non-HTML data, they are not being sent to browsers but to other pages on servers that know what to do with them.

Chris Stanyon

12/16/2014

I know Ray posts a lot of answers, but I'm not Ray - I'm Chris :)

Thanks for the points...