In what ways can PHP developers troubleshoot and debug issues related to character encoding discrepancies between databases and PHP scripts to maintain data integrity?

Character encoding discrepancies between databases and PHP scripts can lead to data corruption or display issues. To troubleshoot and debug these problems, PHP developers can ensure that both the database and PHP scripts are using the same character encoding, such as UTF-8. They can also set the character encoding in the database connection and ensure that data is properly encoded and decoded when interacting with the database.

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

// Encode data before inserting into the database
$data = "Some data to insert";
$encoded_data = $mysqli->real_escape_string(utf8_encode($data));

// Decode data when retrieving from the database
$query = "SELECT * FROM table";
$result = $mysqli->query($query);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    $decoded_data = utf8_decode($row['column_name']);
    // Use $decoded_data as needed
}