How can the character encoding settings in the database connection, HTTP header, and PHP files affect PHP scripts handling special characters?

Character encoding settings in the database connection, HTTP header, and PHP files can affect how PHP scripts handle special characters by causing issues such as garbled text or incorrect display of special characters. To ensure proper handling of special characters, it is important to set the character encoding consistently across all components. This can be done by ensuring that the database connection, HTTP header, and PHP files all use the same character encoding, such as UTF-8. 

// Set character encoding in the database connection
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");

// Set character encoding in the HTTP header
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

// Set character encoding in PHP files
ini_set('default_charset', 'UTF-8');

Keywords

character encoding database connection HTTP header PHP files special characters

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