What are some common pitfalls when working with Umlaut characters in PHP scripts and MySQL databases?

Common pitfalls when working with Umlaut characters in PHP scripts and MySQL databases include improperly setting character encoding, not using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection, and not handling special characters properly when retrieving or displaying data. To solve these issues, make sure to set the character encoding to UTF-8 in both PHP and MySQL, use prepared statements for database queries, and properly sanitize and escape input and output containing Umlaut characters.

// Set character encoding in PHP
mysqli_set_charset($connection, 'utf8');

// Set character encoding in MySQL
$connection->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

// Use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $connection->prepare("SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $value);
$stmt->execute();

// Sanitize and escape Umlaut characters when retrieving or displaying data
$value = htmlentities($value, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $value;