Why does the PHP json encode function convert UTF-8 strings to hexadecimal entities

Question

I have a PHP script that deals with a wide variety of languages. Unfortunately, whenever I try to use json_encode, any Unicode output is converted to hexadecimal entities. Is this the expected behavior? Is there any way to convert the output to UTF-8 characters?

Here's an example of what I'm seeing:

INPUT

echo $text;

OUTPUT

База данни грешка.

INPUT

json_encode($text);

OUTPUT

"\u0411\u0430\u0437\u0430 \u0434\u0430\u043d\u043d\u0438 \u0433\u0440\u0435\u0448\u043a\u043

Answer 1

Hii @kartik,

Working with different servers with various PHP versions, so I had to find solution working for all.

$phpVersion = substr(phpversion(), 0, 3)*1;

if($phpVersion >= 5.4) {
  $encodedValue = json_encode($value, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
} else {
  $encodedValue = preg_replace('/\\\\u([a-f0-9]{4})/e', "iconv('UCS-4LE','UTF-8',pack('V', hexdec('U$1')))", json_encode($value));
}

Hope this works!!

Thank You!!