Problem json_encode utf-8 [duplicate]

Answer 1

Yes, json_encode escapes non-ascii characters. If you decode it you'll get your original result:

$string="こんにちは";
echo "ENCODING: " . mb_detect_encoding($string) . "\n";
$encoded = json_encode($string);
echo "ENCODED JSON: $encoded\n";
$decoded = json_decode($encoded);
echo "DECODED JSON: $decoded\n";

Output:

ENCODING: UTF-8
ENCODED JSON: "\u3053\u3093\u306b\u3061\u306f"
DECODED JSON: こんにちは

EDIT: It's worth nothing that:

JSON uses Unicode exclusively.

The self-documenting format that describes structure and field names as well as specific values;

Source: http://www.json.org/fatfree.html

It uses Unicode NOT UTF-8. This FAQ Explains the difference between UTF-8 and Unicode:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#utf-8

You use JSON, your non-ascii characters get escaped into Unicode code points. For example こ = code point 3053.