PHP equivalent of javascript JSON.stringify()

As I notice PHP’s json_encode($array) mess things up on diacritics. If I update my database column type text with javascript-created JSON passed over HTTP, everything looks good. but when I create the JSON into PHP, some characters get encoded weirdly.

I have this array;

$array = ['M-am întîlnit ieri cu','fosta mea profă de matematică'];

$text = implode(",",$array); // this looks good in db
$json = json_encode($array); // this don't and returns error when try to decode later.

Answer

First off, it’s worth pointing out that PHP is not “messing up” anything. It’s escaping characters, which may look weird, but it is perfectly valid and when you json_decode it later it will be just the same as it was originally. See here: https://3v4l.org/Smj2F

If you don’t like the escaping though, you can use the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE flag:

https://www.php.net/function.json-encode

This flag will “encode multibyte Unicode characters literally” according to https://www.php.net/manual/en/json.constants.php.

So you can do:

json_encode($array, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

And it will give you the following output:

["M-am întîlnit ieri cu","fosta mea profă de matematică"]

Working example: https://3v4l.org/daETG