URL Decoding in PHP

Question

I am trying to decode this URL string using PHP's urldecode function:

urldecode("Ant%C3%B4nio+Carlos+Jobim");

This is supposed to output...

'Antônio Carlos Jobim'

...but instead is ouptutting this

'Antônio Carlos Jobim'

I've tested the string in a JS-based online decoder with great success, but can't seem to do this operation server side. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Actually, you get the desired output, but it is not interpreted as UTF-8. If this is on an HTTP application, you should send a header or a meta tag (or both) which would tell the client to use UTF-8.

Edit: for example:

// replace text/html with the content type you're using
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

Answer 2

Are you also using htmlenteties before echoing it to the page? When I just tested your code it worked fine with just the urldecode("Ant%C3%B4nio+Carlos+Jobim"); part, but when I ran it through htmlentities I got the same output as you did.

It seems to be a problem with the UTF-8 characters and how PHP handles the htmlentities function.

Answer 3

Your string is also UTF-8 encoded. This will work:

echo utf8_decode(urldecode("Ant%C3%B4nio+Carlos+Jobim"));

Output: "Antônio Carlos Jobim".

Answer 4

when I do

<?php
echo urldecode("Ant%C3%B4nio+Carlos+Jobim");
?>

Its display correctly in my browser like

Antônio Carlos Jobim

I have tested with XAMPP