PHP Snippet: How to decode unicode in PHP strings (`ሴ`)

Here is a PHP snippet that can make your (and future-me's) life easier. In PHP, there are several methods for converting Unicode strings to UTF-8. One popular approach is to use PHP built-in functions like mbstring or iconv. In this article, we'll explore two methods for converting Unicode strings to UTF-8 in PHP:

With this, let's dive into code:

Method 1: Decode using the json_decode #

The json_decode function can automatically convert Unicode strings in PHP:

$text = 'Elon \u2018Technoking\u2019 Musk';

echo json_decode('"' . $text . '"');    // prints "Elon 'Technoking' Musk"

You can also create a helper function for this:

function unicode_decode(string $text): string {
  return json_decode('"' . $text . '"');
}

$text = 'Elon \u2018Technoking\u2019 Musk';

echo unicode_decode($text);    // prints "Elon 'Technoking' Musk"

For more information, please refer to this Stackoverflow post.

Method 2: Decoding using Unicode Encoding in PHP 7+ #

Since PHP 7.0, you can use a Unicode escape syntax to represent code points:

echo "\u{9999}";  // represents a unicode char.

If you have a string that contains \u9999, you can use a regular expression to add the required brackets:

// The string with Unicode
$text = 'Elon \u2018Technoking\u2019 Musk';

// The regular expression to match Unicode code point escapes
$regex = '/\\\\u([0-9a-fA-F]{4})/';

// Replace the Unicode code point escapes with their corresponding UTF-8 characters
$decoded = preg_replace_callback($regex, function ($match) {
  // Convert the HTML entity (`&#xXXXX;`) to its UTF-8 character equivalent.
  return mb_convert_encoding('&#x' . $match[1] . ';', 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
}, $text);

echo $decoded; // Outputs "Elon ‘Technoking’ Musk"

For more information, please refer to the PHP documentation.

Again, you can create a helper function as shown above. If you are wondering about whether to use a Snippet such as this or not, you might find my considerations on the VanillaPHP vs. using packages of interest.

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