Weird issue with encoding diacritics

Question

Please, this is not duplicated, my problem is not about converting the letter.

i read some values from a database and some of them contains some weird accent, such as "Piña_Colada" "Rhum_Arrangé". i got no control on the DB and i want to delete the accents and replace it with normal letter -> "Pina_Colada" "Rhum_Arrange"

Here is a way i have find on stackoverflow

function remove_acc($str){
$caracteres = array(
'À' => 'a', 'Á' => 'a', 'Â' => 'a', 'Ä' => 'a', 'à' => 'a', 'á' => 'a', 'â' => 'a', 'ä' => 'a', '@' => 'a',
'È' => 'e', 'É' => 'e', 'Ê' => 'e', 'Ë' => 'e', 'è' => 'e', 'é' => 'e', 'ê' => 'e', 'ë' => 'e', '€' => 'e',
'Ì' => 'i', 'Í' => 'i', 'Î' => 'i', 'Ï' => 'i', 'ì' => 'i', 'í' => 'i', 'î' => 'i', 'ï' => 'i',
'Ò' => 'o', 'Ó' => 'o', 'Ô' => 'o', 'Ö' => 'o', 'ò' => 'o', 'ó' => 'o', 'ô' => 'o', 'ö' => 'o',
'Ù' => 'u', 'Ú' => 'u', 'Û' => 'u', 'Ü' => 'u', 'ù' => 'u', 'ú' => 'u', 'û' => 'u', 'ü' => 'u', 'µ' => 'u',
'Œ' => 'oe', 'œ' => 'oe',
'ñ' => 'n',
'$' => 's');
$str = str_replace(" ", "_",$str);
$str = strtr($str,$caracteres);
echo $str // Piña_Colada
return $str;
}

...

while($row=mysql_fetch_object($requete))
        {

                $titre_recette = $row->titre; //with $row->titre = "Piña Colada"
                $titre_recette_photo = remove_acc($titre_recette);

                echo $titre_recette_photo;
        }

It shows "Piña_Colada" for some reasons... any solution ...?

Here we can see that it's working with declared $string : http://codepad.viper-7.com/psDpwb

it comes from a DB, so might it be encoded in a different way ? In notepad++, im working in utf-8 without BOM

Here is my table declaration :

$sql = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS Recettes (
    id_recette int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
    titre varchar(100) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL";

Answer 1

Can you try it with decoding or encoding the string to UTF-8?

I've added this line to your function: $str = utf8_encode($str); // or maybe utf8_decode($str);

function remove_acc($str){
$caracteres = array(
'À' => 'a', 'Á' => 'a', 'Â' => 'a', 'Ä' => 'a', 'à' => 'a', 'á' => 'a', 'â' => 'a', 'ä' => 'a', '@' => 'a',
'È' => 'e', 'É' => 'e', 'Ê' => 'e', 'Ë' => 'e', 'è' => 'e', 'é' => 'e', 'ê' => 'e', 'ë' => 'e', '€' => 'e',
'Ì' => 'i', 'Í' => 'i', 'Î' => 'i', 'Ï' => 'i', 'ì' => 'i', 'í' => 'i', 'î' => 'i', 'ï' => 'i',
'Ò' => 'o', 'Ó' => 'o', 'Ô' => 'o', 'Ö' => 'o', 'ò' => 'o', 'ó' => 'o', 'ô' => 'o', 'ö' => 'o',
'Ù' => 'u', 'Ú' => 'u', 'Û' => 'u', 'Ü' => 'u', 'ù' => 'u', 'ú' => 'u', 'û' => 'u', 'ü' => 'u', 'µ' => 'u',
'Œ' => 'oe', 'œ' => 'oe',
'ñ' => 'n',
'$' => 's');
$str = str_replace(" ", "_",$str);
$str = utf8_encode($str); // or maybe utf8_decode($str);
$str = strtr($str,$caracteres);
echo $str // Piña_Colada
return $str;
}