How to write file in UTF-8 format?

Question

I have bunch of files that are not in UTF-8 encoding and I'm converting a site to UTF-8 encoding.

I'm using simple script for files that I want to save in utf-8, but the files are saved in old encoding:

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
$fpath="folder";
$d=dir($fpath);
while (False !== ($a = $d->read()))
 {

 if ($a != '.' and $a != '..')
  {

  $npath=$fpath.'/'.$a;

  $data=file_get_contents($npath);

  file_put_contents('tempfolder/'.$a, $data);

  }

 }

How can I save files in utf-8 encoding?

Answer 1

file_get_contents / file_put_contents will not magically convert encoding.

You have to convert the string explicitly; for example with iconv() or mb_convert_encoding().

Try this:

$data = file_get_contents($npath);
$data = mb_convert_encoding($data, 'UTF-8', 'OLD-ENCODING');
file_put_contents('tempfolder/'.$a, $data);

Or alternatively, with PHP's stream filters:

$fd = fopen($file, 'r');
stream_filter_append($fd, 'convert.iconv.UTF-8/OLD-ENCODING');
stream_copy_to_stream($fd, fopen($output, 'w'));

Answer 2

Add BOM: UTF-8

file_put_contents($myFile, "\xEF\xBB\xBF".  $content); 

Answer 3

<?php
function writeUTF8File($filename,$content) { 
        $f=fopen($filename,"w"); 
        # Now UTF-8 - Add byte order mark 
        fwrite($f, pack("CCC",0xef,0xbb,0xbf)); 
        fwrite($f,$content); 
        fclose($f); 
} 
?>

Answer 4

Iconv to the rescue.

Answer 5

On Unix/Linux a simple shell command could be used alternatively to convert all files from a given directory:

 recode L1..UTF8 dir/*

Could be started via PHPs exec() as well.

Answer 6

//add BOM to fix UTF-8 in Excel
fputs($fp, $bom =( chr(0xEF) . chr(0xBB) . chr(0xBF) ));

I got this line from Cool

Answer 7

If you want to use recode recursively, and filter for type, try this:

find . -name "*.html" -exec recode L1..UTF8 {} \;

Answer 8

This works for me. :)

$f=fopen($filename,"w"); 
# Now UTF-8 - Add byte order mark 
fwrite($f, pack("CCC",0xef,0xbb,0xbf)); 
fwrite($f,$content); 
fclose($f); 

Answer 9

I put all together and got easy way to convert ANSI text files to "UTF-8 No Mark":

function filesToUTF8($searchdir,$convdir,$filetypes) {
  $get_files = glob($searchdir.'*{'.$filetypes.'}', GLOB_BRACE);
  foreach($get_files as $file) {
    $expl_path = explode('/',$file);
    $filename = end($expl_path);
    $get_file_content = file_get_contents($file);
    $new_file_content = iconv(mb_detect_encoding($get_file_content, mb_detect_order(), true), "UTF-8", $get_file_content);
    $put_new_file = file_put_contents($convdir.$filename,$new_file_content);
  }
}

Usage: filesToUTF8('C:/Temp/','C:/Temp/conv_files/','php,txt');

Answer 10

1. Open your files in windows notebook
2. Change the encoding to be an UTF-8 encoding
3. Save your file
4. Try again! :O)