Getting data with UTF-8 charset from MSSQL server using PHP FreeTDS extension

Question

I can\'t seem to get data from MSSQL encoded as UTF-8 using FreeTDS extension.

Connecting:

ini_set(\'mssql.charset\', \'UTF-8\');
$this->_resource         


        

Answer 1

MSSQL and UTF-8 are quite a pain in the ... sometimes. I had to convert it manually. The problem: MSSQL doesn't actually know and support UTF-8.

Convert from database value to UTF-8:

mb_detect_encoding($value, mb_detect_order(), true) === 'UTF-8' ? $value : mb_convert_encoding($value, 'UTF-8');

Converting from UTF-8 to database value:

mb_convert_encoding($value, 'UCS-2LE', mb_detect_encoding($value, mb_detect_order(), true));

Fortunately I was using Doctrine so all I had was to create a custom StringType implementation.