How to convert a utf-8 string to a utf-16 string in PHP

Question

How do I convert a utf-8 string to a utf-16 string in PHP?

Answer 1

mbstring supports UTF-16, so you can use mb_convert_encoding.

Answer 2

You could also use iconv.

It's native in PHP, but require that all your text is one charset. Else it could discard characters.