accented characters breaks json_encode() in PHP

Question

I have an array which one of the keys contains some HTML code. I am json_encoding this array for returning. I have recently noticed that json_encode() returns \'null\' if the ht

Answer 1

json_encode() assumes that text is in UTF-8 encoding. If the input looks like malformed UTF-8, it returns null. The only way to get json_encode() to work is to give it input in UTF-8 (which you should probably be using anyway).

And, as Zathrus Writer says in a comment, the actual PHP source code itself should probably also be in UTF-8 encoding, to prevent subtle bugs.