Any way to return PHP `json_encode` with encode UTF-8 and not Unicode?

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Answer 1

{"a":"u00e1"} and {"a":"á"} are different ways to write the same JSON document; The JSON decoder will decode the unicode escape.

In php 5.4+, php's json_encode does have the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option for plain output. On older php versions, you can roll out your own JSON encoder that does not encode non-ASCII characters, or use Pear's JSON encoder and remove line 349 to 433.