Convert UTF-16LE to UTF-8 in php

Question

I use iconv php function but some characters doesn\'t convert correctly:

...
$s = iconv(\'UTF-16\', \'UTF-8\', $s);
...
$s = iconv(\'UTF-16//IGN         


        

Answer 1

iconv supports the UTF-16LE encoding.

You can use it to transpose the encoding from UTF-16LE to UTF-8:

$result = iconv($in_charset = 'UTF-16LE' , $out_charset = 'UTF-8' , $str);
if (false === $result)
{
    throw new Exception('Input string could not be converted.');
}

See iconvDocs.

I'm just wondering if all code-points available in UTF-16LE are available in UTF-8. But I assume that this should fit in your case.

---

Edit: I was not able to reproduce the problem on a box of my own, but on another box I ran into this notice:

Notice: iconv() [function.iconv]: Wrong charset, conversion from UTF-16LE' toUTF-8' is not allowed in ...

Looks like that not all iconv versions can actually convert UTF-16LE to UTF-8.

It might be a workaround to use mb_convert_encodingDocs instead, at least it was in this case (Demo):

$result = mb_convert_encoding($str , 'UTF-8' , 'UTF-16LE');