json_encode is returning NULL?

Question

For some reason the item "description" returns NULL with the following code:

<?php
include('db.php');

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM `staff` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 2') or die(mysql_error());
$rows = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
    $rows[] = $row;
}

echo json_encode($rows);
?>

Here is the schema for my database:

CREATE TABLE `staff` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `description` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `icon` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `date` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `company` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `companyurl` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `appurl` longtext COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=5 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci

Here is what is echoed out on the page:

[{"id":"4","name":"Noter 2","description":null,"icon":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","date":"1262032317","company":"dBelement, LLC","companyurl":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","appurl":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com"},{"id":"3","name":"Noter 2","description":null,"icon":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","date":"1262032317","company":"dBelement, LLC","companyurl":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","appurl":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com"}]

Any ideas?

Answer 1

ntd's anwser didn't solve my problem. For those in same situation, here is how I finally handled this error: Just utf8_encode each of your results.

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
    $rows[] = array_map('utf8_encode', $row);
}

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

For anyone using PDO, the solution is similar to ntd's answer.

From the PHP PDO::__construct page, as a comment from the user Kiipa at live dot com:

To get UTF-8 charset you can specify that in the DSN.

$link = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=DB;charset=UTF8");

Answer 3

few day ago I have the SAME problem with 1 table.

Firstly try:

echo json_encode($rows);
echo json_last_error();  // returns 5 ?

If last line returns 5, problem is with your data. I know, your tables are in UTF-8, but not entered data. For example the input was in txt file, but created on Win machine with stupid encoding (in my case Win-1250 = CP1250) and this data has been entered into the DB.

Solution? Look for new data (excel, web page), edit source txt file via PSPad (or whatever else), change encoding to UTF-8, delete all rows and now put data from original. Save. Enter into DB.

You can also only change encoding to utf-8 and then change all rows manually (give cols with special chars - desc, ...). Good for slaves...

Answer 4

The PHP.net recommended way of setting the charset is now this:

mysqli_set_charset('utf8')

Answer 5

For me, an issue where json_encode would return null encoding of an entity was because my jsonSerialize implementation fetched entire objects for related entities; I solved the issue by making sure that I fetched the ID of the related/associated entity and called ->toArray() when there were more than one entity associated with the object to be json serialized. Note, I'm speaking about cases where one implements JsonSerializable on entities.

Answer 6

You should pass utf8 encoded string in json_encode. You can use utf8_encode and array_map() function like below:

<?php
    $encoded_rows = array_map('utf8_encode', $rows);
    echo json_encode($encoded_rows);
?>