What are the potential issues with character encoding when retrieving data from external sources in PHP?

Character encoding issues can arise when retrieving data from external sources in PHP, leading to garbled or incorrectly displayed text. To solve this problem, you can use the `mb_convert_encoding()` function to convert the retrieved data to the desired character encoding, such as UTF-8, before displaying it on your website. 

// Retrieve data from an external source
$externalData = file_get_contents('http://example.com/data.txt');

// Convert the retrieved data to UTF-8 encoding
$utf8Data = mb_convert_encoding($externalData, 'UTF-8');

// Display the converted data
echo $utf8Data;

Keywords

Character encoding PHP data retrieval external sources encoding issues

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