What steps can be taken to ensure proper encoding of special characters in PHP and MySQL?

Special characters can often cause issues when encoding data in PHP and storing it in MySQL. To ensure proper encoding, it is important to use functions like htmlspecialchars() in PHP to encode special characters before inserting data into the database. Additionally, setting the appropriate character set for the database connection in PHP and ensuring that the database table columns are set to the correct collation can help prevent encoding issues. 

// Set the character set for the database connection
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");

// Encode special characters before inserting data into the database
$encoded_data = htmlspecialchars($data);

// Insert the encoded data into the database
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES ('$encoded_data')";
$mysqli->query($query);

Keywords

PHP MySQL encoding special characters security

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