php with special characters like ñ

Question

At first I thought the problem was when I return echo json_encode($row) from an ajax call that results with ñ are changed to NULL. But after testing I found out that the problem

Answer 1

for me

$test = "Nuñez";
echo $test;

shows Nuñez

You may try

$test = "Nuñez";
echo utf8_decode($test);

or

$test = utf8_encode("Nuñez");
echo utf8_decode($test);