Detect Encoding Php May 2026

$string = "Café"; $encoding = mb_detect_encoding($string); echo $encoding; // UTF-8 (usually) By default, it looks for . You can pass a custom list of encodings:

// Double-check UTF-8 validity if ($detected === 'UTF-8' && !mb_check_encoding($string, 'UTF-8')) return 'Windows-1252'; // common fallback detect encoding php

We’ve all been there. You import a CSV from a client, scrape a legacy website, or process an old text file, and suddenly your output looks like é instead of é . Garbage characters. Mojibake. $string = "Café"

There’s also a pure-PHP option: combined with mb_* functions gives you a U::toUtf8() method that attempts detection + conversion. What About Files? finfo vs mb_detect_encoding Don't confuse file encoding (how bytes are structured) with MIME content type . $encoding = mb_detect_encoding($string)