PHP DOMDocument loadHTML not encoding UTF-8 correctly

Question

I'm trying to parse some HTML using DOMDocument, but when I do, I suddenly lose my encoding (at least that is how it appears to me).

$profile = "<div><p>various japanese characters</p></div>";
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($profile); 

$divs = $dom->getElementsByTagName('div');

foreach ($divs as $div) {
    echo $dom->saveHTML($div);
}

The result of this code is that I get a bunch of characters that are not Japanese. However, if I do:

echo $profile;

it displays correctly. I've tried saveHTML and saveXML, and neither display correctly. I am using PHP 5.3.

What I see:

ã¤ãªãã¤å·ã·ã«ã´ã«ã¦ãã¢ã¤ã«ã©ã³ãç³»ã®å®¶åº­ã«ã9人åå¼ã®5çªç®ã¨ãã¦çã¾ãããå½¼ãå«ãã¦4人ã俳åªã«ãªã£ããç¶è¦ªã¯æ¨æã®ã»ã¼ã«ã¹ãã³ã§ãæ¯è¦ªã¯éµä¾¿å±ã®å®¢å®¤ä¿ã ã£ããé«æ ¡æ代ã¯ã­ã£ãã£ã®ã¢ã«ãã¤ãã«å¤ãã¿ãæè²è³éãåããªããã«ããªãã¯ç³»ã®é«æ ¡ã¸é²å­¦ã

What should be shown:

イリノイ州シカゴにて、アイルランド系の家庭に、9人兄弟の5番目として生まれる。彼を含めて4人が俳優になった。父親は木材のセールスマンで、母親は郵便局の客室係だった。高校時代はキャディのアルバイトに勤しみ、教育資金を受けながらカトリック系の高校へ進学

EDIT: I've simplified the code down to five lines so you can test it yourself.

$profile = "<div lang=ja><p>イリノイ州シカゴにて、アイルランド系の家庭に、</p></div>";
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($profile);
echo $dom->saveHTML();
echo $profile;

Here is the html that is returned:

<div lang="ja"><p>イリノイ州シカゴã«ã¦ã€ã‚¢ã‚¤ãƒ«ãƒ©ãƒ³ãƒ‰ç³»ã®å®¶åº­ã«ã€</p></div>
<div lang="ja"><p>イリノイ州シカゴにて、アイルランド系の家庭に、</p></div>

Answer 1

DOMDocument::loadHTML will treat your string as being in ISO-8859-1 unless you tell it otherwise. This results in UTF-8 strings being interpreted incorrectly.

If your string doesn't contain an XML encoding declaration, you can prepend one to cause the string to be treated as UTF-8:

$profile = '<p>イリノイ州シカゴにて、アイルランド系の家庭に、9</p>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML('<?xml encoding="utf-8" ?>' . $profile);
echo $dom->saveHTML();

If you cannot know if the string will contain such a declaration already, there's a workaround in SmartDOMDocument which should help you:

$profile = '<p>イリノイ州シカゴにて、アイルランド系の家庭に、9</p>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML(mb_convert_encoding($profile, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'UTF-8'));
echo $dom->saveHTML();

This is not a great workaround, but since not all characters can be represented in ISO-8859-1 (like these katana), it's the safest alternative.