Are there best practices for ensuring accurate character encoding conversion in PHP, especially when dealing with data from sources like iCloud?

When dealing with data from sources like iCloud, it is essential to ensure accurate character encoding conversion in PHP to prevent data corruption or display issues. One best practice is to consistently use UTF-8 encoding for all data handling to maintain compatibility across different systems and sources.

// Set the default encoding to UTF-8
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

// Convert data from iCloud to UTF-8 encoding
$dataFromICloud = mb_convert_encoding($dataFromICloud, "UTF-8", "auto");