Iconv Encoding List And PHP Usage

Iconv functions are often used in PHP when you have problems with character encoding. When you have non-latin chars in the text you work with, you might have problems with storing them, writing into database, etc. It becomes useful when you use several different encodings and when you need to store or output some text into a single place. So let’s go to PHP.net and take a look at all the functions that are related to iconv. It’s a pity, but you can’t find the list of encodings there. Just some examples are located under user contributed notes. But what to do if you need to have the list of encodings, to choose some to use? Just use the command line, with the following command:

Let me paste the command output here:

Now all you need is just to select one of them that suits your needs and use them. Note, that if you try to use a wrong encoding, you won’t get any result, but won’t also get any error messages. So be careful when selecting encodings from the list.

In order to use iconv in PHP, you should check your configure line and recompile PHP if necessary. It should look like:

And especially iconv section:

If you don’t have all of this all you need is just to recompile PHP with –with-iconv