What are the advantages of using UTF-8 encoding for PHP applications compared to iso-8859-1?

When working with PHP applications, using UTF-8 encoding over iso-8859-1 allows for better support of international characters and symbols. UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding that can represent any character in the Unicode standard, making it more versatile and inclusive compared to iso-8859-1 which is limited to Latin characters. By using UTF-8 encoding, PHP applications can handle a wider range of languages and special characters seamlessly.

// Set UTF-8 encoding for PHP applications
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
mb_http_output('UTF-8');