php - Using str_split on a UTF-8 encoded string

Question

I'm currently working on a project, and instead of using regular MySQL queries I thought I'd go ahead and learn how to use PDO.

I have a table called contestants, both the database, the table, and all of the columns are in utf-8. I have ten entries in the contestant table, and their column "name" contains characters such as ???.

Now, when I fetch an entry from the database, and var_dump the name, I get a good result, a string with all the special characters intact. But what I need to do is to split the string by characters, to get them in an array that I then shuffle.

For instance, I have this string: Test ??? T??n

And when I run str_split I get each character in it's own key in an array. The only issue is that all the special characters display as this: ?, meaning the array will be like this:

Array
(
    [0] => T
    [1] => e
    [2] => s
    [3] => t
    [4] =>  
    [5] => ?
    [6] => ?
    [7] => ?
    [8] => ?
    [9] => ?
    [10] => ?
    [11] =>  
    [12] => T
    [13] => ?
    [14] => ?
    [15] => ?
    [16] => ?
    [17] => n
)

As you can see, it not only messes up the characters, but it also duplicates them in str_split process. I've tried several ways to split the string, but they all have the same issue. When I output the string before the split, it shows the special characters just fine.

This is my dbConn.php code:

// Require config file: require_once('config.inc.php');

// Start PDO connection:
$dbHandle = new PDO("mysql:host=$dbHost;dbname=$dbName;charset=utf-8", $dbUser, $dbPass);
$dbHandle -> exec("SET CHARACTER SET utf8");

// Set error reporting:
$dbHandle->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_WARNING);

And this is the code that I use to fetch from the database and loop:

// Require files:
require_once('dbConn.php');

// Get random artist:
$artist = $dbHandle->query("SELECT * FROM ".ARTIST_TABLE." WHERE id = 11 ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
$artist->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_OBJ);
$artist = $artist->fetch();
var_dump($artist->name);

// Split name:
$artistChars = str_split($artist->name);

I'm connecting with utf-8, my php file is utf-8 without BOM and no other special characters on this page share this issue. What could be wrong, or what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Mind that the utf8 declaration used in your connect-string is reported to be not working. In the comments on php.net I frequently see this alternative:

$dbHandle = new PDO("mysql:host=$dbHost;dbname=$dbName;charset=utf8", $dbUser, $dbPass,
                    array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES 'utf8'"));