PHP: prevent from encoding é to?

Question

I'm importing data from a CSV file to a database. In the CSV file there are a lots of strange characters like (é, ë, ...) that need to be converted to &eacute, &euml to store in the database. Right now all strange characters are converted to a questionmark. But what function do I use to convert them. HTML_ENTITIES, utf8_decode, ...?

I'm using UTF8

Answer 1

Well... it would be htmlentities($string, ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401, 'UTF-8');. But the approach is wrong.

Checklist:

1. The data of your file is UTF-8
2. When you use string functions with constant strings (e.g. str_replace('e', 'é', $foo)) this file is UTF-8
3. The database connection you use allows the transportation of UTF-8 encoded characters and is configured for that (SET NAMES 'utf8' for MySQL)
4. The Content-Type header (or meta-tag) of your page tells the browser to expect UTF-8