php_value output_buffering on
php_value output_handler mb_output_handler
php_value mbstring.http_output UTF-8

Alright! That badly needs documenting in fact although now you mention it ..

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php

If you append the string //TRANSLIT to out_charset transliteration is activated. This means that when a character can’t be represented in the target charset, it can be approximated through one or several similarly looking characters. If you append the string //IGNORE, characters that cannot be represented in the target charset are silently discarded. Otherwise, str is cut from the first illegal character.

you can clean it with iconv the following way:

$t = iconv(”UTF-8″,”UTF-8//IGNORE”,$t);

Alright! That badly needs documenting in fact although now you mention it, it’s documented here: http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/documentation/libiconv/iconv_open.3.html (i.e. $ man iconv_open ). Interesting - needs to try that //TRANSLIT flag …

$t = iconv(”UTF-8″,”UTF-8//IGNORE”,$t);

From http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/2005/01/24/how-to-get-rid-of-invalid-utf-8-characters.html

:)

If you want to make sure incoming UTF-8 is valid UTF-8, use iconv to convert it from UTF-8 to UTF-8. You can also potentially use iconv to clean the input.

PHP’s iconv extension raises an error notice if the input and returns only the portion of the input up to the first invalid (non UTF-8) byte it finds. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a way to put it into “cleaning” mode, so it can only be used for validation. An example;

Meanwhile, the command line interface to iconv allows you to enable “cleaning” - iconv silently drops any bad bytes it finds. E.g.