What are the best practices for handling character encoding in PHP to avoid the need for excessive utf8_encode() conversions?

When working with character encoding in PHP, it is important to ensure that all input and output is consistently encoded in UTF-8 to avoid the need for excessive utf8_encode() conversions. One way to achieve this is by setting the default charset to UTF-8 in your PHP script using the header() function. Additionally, make sure that your database connection is also set to UTF-8 to ensure proper encoding of data. 

// Set default charset to UTF-8
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

// Set UTF-8 encoding for database connection
$mysqli = new mysqli('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'database');
$mysqli->set_charset('utf8');

Keywords

character encoding PHP utf8_encode conversion handling

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