What are best practices for handling special characters when using json_encode?

Special characters in a string can cause issues when using json_encode, as they may not be properly encoded. To handle special characters correctly, you can use the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option in json_encode to ensure that Unicode characters are not escaped. This will encode special characters properly in the JSON output.

$data = array(
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'description' => 'Special characters like é, ü, etc. will be properly encoded.',
);

$json = json_encode($data, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
echo $json;