How to replace Microsoft-encoded quotes in PHP

Question

I need to replace Microsoft Word's version of single and double quotations marks (“ ” ‘ ’) with regular quotes (' and ") due to an encoding issue in my application. I do not need them to be HTML entities and I cannot change my database schema.

I have two options: to use either a regular expression or an associated array.

Is there a better way to do this?

Solution 1

Considering you only want to replace a few specific and well identified characters, I would go for str_replace with an array: you obviously don't need the heavy artillery regex will bring you ;-)

And if you encounter some other special characters (damn copy-paste from Microsoft Word...), you can just add them to that array whenever is necessary / whenever they are identified.

The best answer I can give to your comment is probably this link: Convert Smart Quotes with PHP

And the associated code (quoting that page):

function convert_smart_quotes($string) 
{ 
    $search = array(chr(145), 
                    chr(146), 
                    chr(147), 
                    chr(148), 
                    chr(151)); 

    $replace = array("'", 
                     "'", 
                     '"', 
                     '"', 
                     '-'); 

    return str_replace($search, $replace, $string); 
} 

(I don't have Microsoft Word on this computer, so I can't test by myself)

I don't remember exactly what we used at work (I was not the one having to deal with that kind of input), but it was the same kind of stuff...

Solution 2

I have found an answer to this question. You need just one line of code using iconv() function in php:

// replace Microsoft Word version of single  and double quotations marks (“ ” ‘ ’) with  regular quotes (' and ")
$output = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $input);     

Solution 3

Your Microsoft-encoded quotes are the probably the typographic quotation marks. You can simply replace them with str_replace if you know the encoding of the string in that you want to replace them.

Here’s an example for UTF-8 but using a single mapping array with strtr:

$quotes = array(
    "\xC2\xAB"     => '"', // « (U+00AB) in UTF-8
    "\xC2\xBB"     => '"', // » (U+00BB) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x98" => "'", // ‘ (U+2018) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x99" => "'", // ’ (U+2019) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9A" => "'", // ‚ (U+201A) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9B" => "'", // ‛ (U+201B) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9C" => '"', // “ (U+201C) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9D" => '"', // ” (U+201D) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9E" => '"', // „ (U+201E) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\x9F" => '"', // ‟ (U+201F) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\xB9" => "'", // ‹ (U+2039) in UTF-8
    "\xE2\x80\xBA" => "'", // › (U+203A) in UTF-8
);
$str = strtr($str, $quotes);

If you’re need another encoding, you can use mb_convert_encoding to convert the keys.

Solution 4

If like me you arrive here with an enormous range of broken ASCII / Microsoft Word characters that are doing weird things to your CMS or RTE and iconv isn't working, then this mad function might just be for you.

Make sure your encoding is UTF-8 when you save this function to a file.

<?php
    /**
     * fixMSWord
     *
     * Replace ASCII chars with UTF-8. Note there are ASCII characters that don't
     * correctly map and will be replaced by spaces.
     *
     * @author      Robin Cafolla
     * @date        2013-03-22
     */
    function fixMSWord($string) {
        $map = Array(
            '33' => '!', '34' => '"', '35' => '#', '36' => '$', '37' => '%', '38' => '&', '39' => "'", '40' => '(', '41' => ')', '42' => '*',
            '43' => '+', '44' => ',', '45' => '-', '46' => '.', '47' => '/', '48' => '0', '49' => '1', '50' => '2', '51' => '3', '52' => '4',
            '53' => '5', '54' => '6', '55' => '7', '56' => '8', '57' => '9', '58' => ':', '59' => ';', '60' => '<', '61' => '=', '62' => '>',
            '63' => '?', '64' => '@', '65' => 'A', '66' => 'B', '67' => 'C', '68' => 'D', '69' => 'E', '70' => 'F', '71' => 'G', '72' => 'H',
            '73' => 'I', '74' => 'J', '75' => 'K', '76' => 'L', '77' => 'M', '78' => 'N', '79' => 'O', '80' => 'P', '81' => 'Q', '82' => 'R',
            '83' => 'S', '84' => 'T', '85' => 'U', '86' => 'V', '87' => 'W', '88' => 'X', '89' => 'Y', '90' => 'Z', '91' => '[', '92' => '\\',
            '93' => ']', '94' => '^', '95' => '_', '96' => '`', '97' => 'a', '98' => 'b', '99' => 'c', '100'=> 'd', '101'=> 'e', '102'=> 'f',
            '103'=> 'g', '104'=> 'h', '105'=> 'i', '106'=> 'j', '107'=> 'k', '108'=> 'l', '109'=> 'm', '110'=> 'n', '111'=> 'o', '112'=> 'p',
            '113'=> 'q', '114'=> 'r', '115'=> 's', '116'=> 't', '117'=> 'u', '118'=> 'v', '119'=> 'w', '120'=> 'x', '121'=> 'y', '122'=> 'z',
            '123'=> '{', '124'=> '|', '125'=> '}', '126'=> '~', '127'=> ' ', '128'=> '&#8364;', '129'=> ' ', '130'=> ',', '131'=> ' ', '132'=> '"',
            '133'=> '.', '134'=> ' ', '135'=> ' ', '136'=> '^', '137'=> ' ', '138'=> ' ', '139'=> '<', '140'=> ' ', '141'=> ' ', '142'=> ' ',
            '143'=> ' ', '144'=> ' ', '145'=> "'", '146'=> "'", '147'=> '"', '148'=> '"', '149'=> '.', '150'=> '-', '151'=> '-', '152'=> '~',
            '153'=> ' ', '154'=> ' ', '155'=> '>', '156'=> ' ', '157'=> ' ', '158'=> ' ', '159'=> ' ', '160'=> ' ', '161'=> '¡', '162'=> '¢',
            '163'=> '£', '164'=> '¤', '165'=> '¥', '166'=> '¦', '167'=> '§', '168'=> '¨', '169'=> '©', '170'=> 'ª', '171'=> '«', '172'=> '¬',
            '173'=> '­', '174'=> '®', '175'=> '¯', '176'=> '°', '177'=> '±', '178'=> '²', '179'=> '³', '180'=> '´', '181'=> 'µ', '182'=> '¶',
            '183'=> '·', '184'=> '¸', '185'=> '¹', '186'=> 'º', '187'=> '»', '188'=> '¼', '189'=> '½', '190'=> '¾', '191'=> '¿', '192'=> 'À',
            '193'=> 'Á', '194'=> 'Â', '195'=> 'Ã', '196'=> 'Ä', '197'=> 'Å', '198'=> 'Æ', '199'=> 'Ç', '200'=> 'È', '201'=> 'É', '202'=> 'Ê',
            '203'=> 'Ë', '204'=> 'Ì', '205'=> 'Í', '206'=> 'Î', '207'=> 'Ï', '208'=> 'Ð', '209'=> 'Ñ', '210'=> 'Ò', '211'=> 'Ó', '212'=> 'Ô',
            '213'=> 'Õ', '214'=> 'Ö', '215'=> '×', '216'=> 'Ø', '217'=> 'Ù', '218'=> 'Ú', '219'=> 'Û', '220'=> 'Ü', '221'=> 'Ý', '222'=> 'Þ',
            '223'=> 'ß', '224'=> 'à', '225'=> 'á', '226'=> 'â', '227'=> 'ã', '228'=> 'ä', '229'=> 'å', '230'=> 'æ', '231'=> 'ç', '232'=> 'è',
            '233'=> 'é', '234'=> 'ê', '235'=> 'ë', '236'=> 'ì', '237'=> 'í', '238'=> 'î', '239'=> 'ï', '240'=> 'ð', '241'=> 'ñ', '242'=> 'ò',
            '243'=> 'ó', '244'=> 'ô', '245'=> 'õ', '246'=> 'ö', '247'=> '÷', '248'=> 'ø', '249'=> 'ù', '250'=> 'ú', '251'=> 'û', '252'=> 'ü',
            '253'=> 'ý', '254'=> 'þ', '255'=> 'ÿ'
        );

        $search = Array();
        $replace = Array();

        foreach ($map as $s => $r) {
            $search[] = chr((int)$s);
            $replace[] = $r;
        }

        return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
    }

Solution 5

We used the following. It deals with a few more special characters.

$text = str_replace(chr(130), ',', $text);    // Baseline single quote
$text = str_replace(chr(132), '"', $text);    // Baseline double quote
$text = str_replace(chr(133), '...', $text);  // Ellipsis
$text = str_replace(chr(145), "'", $text);    // Left single quote
$text = str_replace(chr(146), "'", $text);    // Right single quote
$text = str_replace(chr(147), '"', $text);    // Left double quote
$text = str_replace(chr(148), '"', $text);    // Right double quote

$text = mb_convert_encoding($text, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'UTF-8');

View more solutions

Comments

[Misha M]

How would you specify the MS characters?

[Misha M]

This is what I was looking for. Thanks. The search array did not work as is, I ended up using the Hex version that was provided in the comments from the link you gave above.

[dotty]

The '&' sign copied from MS word doesn't encode properly, is there anyway we can use this snippet to encode that to '&'. (aswell as bullets and other chars)

[R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE]

Rather than the ugly \x escapes, couldn't you simply include the literal characters in your source file?

[Gumbo]

@R..: That’s the problem: There are many that don’t know enough about character encodings and/or what character encoding they’re using.

[Drewid]

worked a charm thanks. Gotta love importing excel spread sheets into mysql :S +1

[Justin Dominic]

if my answer helped u can u upvote my original question stackoverflow.com/questions/6597268/…

[Blazemonger]

For other users: You might look for chr(149) (bullet) and replace it with an asterisk as well. This page has a list of several chr() characters you might want to convert.

[Eric Kigathi]

Thanks however in my case I needed to pick the right character encoding (which was CP1252 and not UTF-8): $output = iconv('CP1252', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $input);

[Justin Dominic]

@eric good to know you used your mind on it for others. thanks for sharing :)

[PHP Connect]

Can i use this for project because this is in MIT licenses

[thelastshadow]

In general the MIT licence lets you use it in whatever way you like, so long as you don't remove the licence :)

[Ben Sinclair]

Yep this worked for me. I'd recommend this over the accepted answer :)

[Ngoc Pham]

This works for me while the accepted answer doesn't. I would like to change this one to accepted answer.

[JMTyler]

You decided to put a license on what essentially amounts to... an array?

[thelastshadow]

I just copied the code out of the file it was in and pasted it here. I try to put open licences on as much of the code I write as possible, even when all it amounts to is a useful array.

[NobleUplift]

It doesn't matter what license you place inside an answer, all user content is licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required. You can see this in the footer. This code is no longer under the MIT license.

[thelastshadow]

Nah, it's dual licenced. Use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

[NobleUplift]

But are the Microsoft quotes Unicode code points or CP1252 code points? If the latter, this solution will not work. Actually, it will throw a notice: PHP Notice: iconv(): Detected an illegal character in input string in php shell code on line 1.

[NobleUplift]

Also, I should point out that this function is not "fixing ASCII". There are no ASCII characters above 127. The only thing I can see this function doing is mangling Unicode strings.

[NobleUplift]

You don't check the encoding of the string first, so this function will mangle certain Unicode passed into it.

[NobleUplift]

You should check the encoding of the string $text before you run replaces in it. It could already be a Unicode string and you are mangling it.

[thelastshadow]

@NobleUplift I have renamed it to fixMSWord. I'd agree that it does mangle, but if you have the problem this function fixes it does the job, and I've yet to find another solution.

[marcvangend]

This worked for me when the accepted answer, for some reason, did not (probably a UTF-8 thing). Thanks.

[Gumbo]

@marcvangend The accepted answer does not expect UTF-8 but some other single-byte character encoding.

[eljamz]

Worked flawlessly, thank you ! im on UTF-8 charset, files encoded and also utf8-bin in database... thanks!

[gorillagoat]

after tearing my hair out trying to figure my encoding issues, this eventually was the ticket for me. i used this (php.net/manual/en/function.chr.php) to extend your function for my own purposes - scroll halfway down to the example posted by Josh B.

[Neek]

This seems a good (or, lazy) solution to my problem in Zen Cart, customers entering curly quotes in their names when signing up, and ZC stores first and last name in the PHP session, which then fails to decode with "PHP Warning: session_start(): Failed to decode session object. Session has been destroyed" message. I'm going to work around by stripping the strings with iconv before saving them to the database during account creation.

[Neek]

WARNING: iconv is a PHP extension and may not be installed on your production environment! "Fatal error: Call to undefined function iconv()" Be sure to test your code on every platform it needs to run.

[Cutis]

This is a good trick. but I notice this solution removes special characters like é, è, à, â and others. Any solution to shirk the issue?

[Professor Zoom]

January 2022 this worked for me in PHP 5.6