How to parse string with special characters from database using php?

Question

I had a MySQL database with names of roads in it. There is this one entry that gives me problems when I query it from the database: Osmeña Avenue . I stored the data to the DB using Java, and then I viewed the data using phpMyadmin then I saw 4f736d65c3b161204176656e7565 instead of Osmeña Avenue . When I query for the names, I placed them inside an XML file, which I use for my application. When I query for Osmeña Avenue , my program freezes. I found out that in the XML file, the ñ is replaced by a , which causes the freeze. First, why do I saw a bunch of numbers in the phpMyAdmin view for Osmeña Avenue ? And what can I do to get the right string with the special characters from the database using PHP? Thanks in advance!

EDIT: the XML file is used to draw routes using OpenLayers.Format.KML;.

Answer 1

4f736d65c3b161204176656e7565 is a sequence of bytes ( 4f , 73 ,..) that represent Osme\\xc3\\xb1a Avenue , which is the UTF-8 representation of Osmeña Avenue .

Just decode your data properly. Inside your app, keep working only with Unicode strings, and encode/decode string data at system edges.

Answer 2

Don't use utf8_bin , use utf8_general instead.

Or, it would be even better to just use latin1_swedish_ci or latin1_swedish_cs .