How can PHP developers ensure consistent character encoding for strings retrieved from a database, regardless of the original encoding?

When retrieving strings from a database, PHP developers can ensure consistent character encoding by converting the strings to a desired encoding using PHP functions like `iconv` or `mb_convert_encoding`. This will help avoid issues with mixed character encodings in the retrieved data. Additionally, setting the appropriate character encoding in the database connection and ensuring the HTML content-type meta tag is set to the desired encoding can help maintain consistency.

// Retrieve string from the database
$originalString = $row['column_name'];

// Convert the string to UTF-8 encoding
$utf8String = mb_convert_encoding($originalString, 'UTF-8', 'auto');

// Use the $utf8String for further processing
echo $utf8String;