utf8_decode()

utf8_decode() — Converts a string from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1, replacing invalid or unrepresentable characters.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

The PHP manual marks this function as deprecated (since PHP 8.2, visit the php.net documentation for various alternatives): do not use it in new code.

What it does

This function converts the string string from the UTF-8 encoding to ISO-8859-1. Bytes in the string which are not valid UTF-8, and UTF-8 characters which do not exist in ISO-8859-1 (that is, code points above U+00FF) are replaced with ?.

Signature

utf8_decode(string $string): string

Parameters

Return value

Returns the ISO-8859-1 translation of string.

Example

A runnable snippet:

// Convert the string 'Zoë' from UTF-8 to ISO 8859-1 $utf8_string = "\x5A\x6F\xC3\xAB"; $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($utf8_string); echo bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n"; // Invalid UTF-8 sequences are replaced with '?' $invalid_utf8_string = "\xC3"; $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($invalid_utf8_string); var_dump($iso8859_1_string); // Characters which don't exist in ISO 8859-1, such as // '€' (Euro Sign) are also replaced with '?' $utf8_string = "\xE2\x82\xAC"; $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($utf8_string); var_dump($iso8859_1_string);

Output:

5a6feb string(1) "?" string(1) "?"

Changelog

See also

utf8_encode(), mb_convert_encoding(), iconv()

All PHP 8.5 built-in functions

Reference card built from the PHP manual page utf8_decode() (PHP documentation, CC BY 3.0). The page is generated from the manual, so the wording of the parameter and return value text follows php.net.