Character encoding issue for £ sign

Hi

On a clients recruitment website, i am displaying the details of a vacancy which includes the salary preceeded by a pound sign. When the job details are entered into the mysql database through a html/php form, it changes the £ sign to £, which is no problem, as when i display the variable on the job detail page it displays the £ sign, which is cool.

code here:

					<?php
						include("includes/db_connect.inc.php");
						
						$query = "Select * FROM vacancies ORDER BY date_added DESC";
						
						$result=mysql_query($query);

						$num=mysql_numrows($result);

						mysql_close();

						$i=0;
						while ($i < $num) {

						$vacancy_id = mysql_result($result,$i,'vacancy_id');
						$job_title = mysql_result($result,$i,'job_title');
						$salary = mysql_result($result,$i,'salary');
						$location = mysql_result($result,$i,'location');
						$terms = mysql_result($result,$i,'terms');
						
						echo "	
									<div class='briefdesc'>
										<div class='desc_title'>
											<p class='title_text'>$job_title</p>
											<p class='title_text'>$terms</p>
										</div>
										<div class='desc_details'>
											<table>
												<tr>
													<td class='detail_text'>Location:
													</td>
													<td class='detail_text'>$location
													</td>
												</tr>
												<tr>
													<td class='detail_text'>Salary:
													</td>
													<td class='detail_text'>$salary
													</td>
												</tr>
												<tr>
													<td class='detail_text'>Contract:
													</td>
													<td class='detail_text'>$terms
													</td>
												</tr>
											</table>
										</div>
										<div class='desc_more'>
											<a class='viewvacbut' href='view-vacancy.php?vacancy_id=$vacancy_id'><img class='no_marg' src='images/more.png' /></a>
										</div>
									</div>
							";
						$i++;
						}
					?>

PHP:

BUT

I am also displaying this job on the homepage as a job of the week, inside a joomla template. The job of the week is not managed inside of joomla, it is just displayed dynamically through my own scripts. But instead of displaying the £ sign for the salary variable, it is showing £.

code here:

							<?php
								include("includes/db_connect.inc.php");
								
								$query="SELECT * FROM vacancies WHERE jotw = 'yes'";
								
								$result=mysql_query($query);

								$num=mysql_numrows($result);

								mysql_close();

								$i=0;
								while ($i < $num) {
								
								$vacancy_id 	= mysql_result($result,$i,'vacancy_id');
								$job_title 		= mysql_result($result,$i,'job_title');
								$salary 		= mysql_result($result,$i,'salary');
								$location 		= mysql_result($result,$i,'location');
								$terms 			= mysql_result($result,$i,'terms');
								$desc1 			= mysql_result($result,$i,'desc1');
								$limit_desc1 	= substr($desc1,0,200);								
								
								echo "<table id='jotw_table'>
										<tr>
											<td class='jotw_title'>$job_title
											</td>
										</tr>
										<tr>
											<td class='jotw_title'>$salary
											</td>
										</tr>
										<tr>
											<td class='jotw_title'>$location
											</td>
										</tr>
										<tr>
											<td class='jotw_title'>$terms
											</td>
										</tr>
										<tr>
											<td class='jotw_desc'>$limit_desc1...
											</td>
										</tr>
										<tr>
											<td><a href='../view-vacancy.php?vacancy_id=$vacancy_id'><img class='no_marg' src='../images/more.png'></a>
											</td>
										</tr>
									  </table>
								
								";
								$i++;
								}
							?>

PHP:

The 2 scripts displaying the vacancy details are very similar, so i am completely stumped as to why it is displaying differently.

All the web pages are encoded utf-8, including the index.php file within the joomla template.

Any help is muchly appreciated.

cheers

 

£ = html code £

 

yep i know that. But if its displaying ok for the first script, why not the second?

 

Or £, which is probably easier to remember.

Anyway, compare the charsets used on both sites. You might want to take a look at utf8_encode()/utf8_decode().

 

all chatsets are utf-8? and the scripts are on the same site

as the client is enetering this data into a form, they are using the £ sign, so i will need to figure out why it is displaying correctly through 1 script and not the other?

 

How are you displaying "job of the week" is it an iframe or something ?

This is the only problem right ?

 

yes job of the week is the only problem.

No it is not in an iframe, it is inside a joomla template, but not managed from within joomla.

 

Assuming its salary you could do this, it will decode $salary £ - £ regardless

<tr>
                                            <td class='jotw_title'>utf8_decode($salary);
                                            </td>
                                        </tr>

Code (markup):

 

ok, so how would i use this as you have stated? as this is a dynamically displayed table

i added what you said but it just outputs - utf8_decode(£22,000);

how do i drop out of php to get this to work?

 

ah solved it now.

cheers MyVodaFone, i just decoded the variable before displaying.

cheers. Been working on this since this morning. bummer!