Asp.net renders string with wrong encoding, but PHP doesn't (MySQL)

Question

I took over some old php application with MySQL as database. Inside the database, there are tables including content with localized strings (therefore containing special chars)

Currently there is a PHP application accessing that database. My job is to create an ASP.net (C# codebehind) application that accesses that strings as well. That works, as far as encoding goes.

If I try to access these strings, I do get a kind of encoding problem, like 'Ändern' and 'Prüfzeichen', but only in the ASP.net application. The PHP app sets utf-8 as charset and the strings are perfectly rendered. In the ASP.net application it's gibberish, regardless of the page encoding.

In the MySQL database, the charset for the specified table 'translations' is set to 'latin --cp1252 West European' and collation to 'latin_swedish_ci'.

I can't seem to figure out what PHP apparently does, and ASP.net does not. I traced the php code and could not find any sign of special encoding while getting a string from the database.

The question is, how can I ensure correct encoding inside the ASP.net application without modifying the database, because big changes at the php code are not possible?

Does anybody have a clue?

Answer 1

I can't seem to figure out what PHP apparently does,

The PHP app sets utf-8 as charset. For the database connection. With SET NAMES <encoding> query. Where <encoding> is your pages encoding

Answer 2

The best long-term solution would be to convert the table to use UTF-8 encoding:

ALTER TABLE translations CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

If the data is already in utf-8 format (even though the character set is latin1), you'll need to convert each column to the correct encoding.

This converts a column defined as being latin1 but containing utf8 to a column declared as and containing utf8:

ALTER TABLE translations CHANGE columnNameHere columnNameHere BLOB;
ALTER TABLE translations CHANGE columnNameHere columnNameHere TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8;

Answer 3

If finally managed to find way to convert into UTF8.

System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes("convert me"))