Handling multibyte CSV files in PHP using fgetcsv() and setlocale()

1. Handling multibyte CSV files in PHP using fgetcsv() and setlocale() By Daniel Rhodes of Warp Asylum ( www.warpasylum.co.uk )

3. There is no mb_fgetcsv() !

4. But “Locale setting is taken into account” by fgetcsv()

5. Let's see what we can do...

7. Our database

8. Our PHP files

9. Our HTML output

10. But we need to process the following CSV file which is in EUC-JP encoding...

11. The CSV file

12. The CSV file source

14. The first attempt

16. Let's try setting mbstring.internal_encoding to that of our CSV file, EUC-JP...

17. Let's try again

19. Let's try using the setlocale() function...

20. Using setlocale()

22. Just out of curiousity, let's remove the Japanese directive settings for mbstring and see if it still works...

23. Out of curiousity...

25. Set locale to that of CSV file

26. Note that setlocale() doesn't permanently affect the system locale setting

27. Mbstring settings not important

28. Mbstring itself not actually needed!

30. Specified locale for setlocale() must be supported by OS of PHP server

31. Quoting string fields in the source CSV file may help enormously – so much so that setlocale() is not needed!

32. Questions welcome at daniel.rhodes@warpasylum.co.uk