What steps should be taken to ensure consistent character encoding across all aspects of a PHP web application, including database connections and HTTP responses?

To ensure consistent character encoding across all aspects of a PHP web application, including database connections and HTTP responses, you should set the character encoding to UTF-8 in your PHP code, database configuration, and HTTP headers. This will help prevent issues with special characters and ensure proper handling of multibyte characters.

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

// Set character encoding in database connection
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password', array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8"));

// Set character encoding in HTTP response headers
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');