Replace foreign characters

Question

I need to be able to replace some common foreign characters with English equivalents before I store values into my db.

For example: æ replace with <

Answer 1

You can define your convertable characters in an array, and use str_replace():

$conversions = array(
    "æ" => "ae",
    "ñ" => "n",
);

$text = str_replace(array_keys($conversions), $conversions, $text);