How to replace Microsoft-encoded quotes in PHP
I have found an answer to this question. You need just one line of code using iconv() function in php:
// replace Microsoft Word version of single and double quotations marks (“ ” ‘ ’) with regular quotes (' and ")
$output = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $input);
Considering you only want to replace a few specific and well identified characters, I would go for str_replace with an array: you obviously don't need the heavy artillery regex will bring you ;-)
And if you encounter some other special characters (damn copy-paste from Microsoft Word...), you can just add them to that array whenever is necessary / whenever they are identified.
The best answer I can give to your comment is probably this link: Convert Smart Quotes with PHP
And the associated code (quoting that page):
function convert_smart_quotes($string)
{
$search = array(chr(145),
chr(146),
chr(147),
chr(148),
chr(151));
$replace = array("'",
"'",
'"',
'"',
'-');
return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
}
(I don't have Microsoft Word on this computer, so I can't test by myself)
I don't remember exactly what we used at work (I was not the one having to deal with that kind of input), but it was the same kind of stuff...
Your Microsoft-encoded quotes are the probably the typographic quotation marks. You can simply replace them with str_replace if you know the encoding of the string in that you want to replace them.
Here’s an example for UTF-8 but using a single mapping array with strtr:
$quotes = array(
"\xC2\xAB" => '"', // « (U+00AB) in UTF-8
"\xC2\xBB" => '"', // » (U+00BB) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x98" => "'", // ‘ (U+2018) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x99" => "'", // ’ (U+2019) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9A" => "'", // ‚ (U+201A) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9B" => "'", // ‛ (U+201B) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9C" => '"', // “ (U+201C) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9D" => '"', // ” (U+201D) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9E" => '"', // „ (U+201E) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\x9F" => '"', // ‟ (U+201F) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\xB9" => "'", // ‹ (U+2039) in UTF-8
"\xE2\x80\xBA" => "'", // › (U+203A) in UTF-8
);
$str = strtr($str, $quotes);
If you’re need another encoding, you can use mb_convert_encoding to convert the keys.
If like me you arrive here with an enormous range of broken ASCII / Microsoft Word characters that are doing weird things to your CMS or RTE and iconv isn't working, then this mad function might just be for you.
Make sure your encoding is UTF-8 when you save this function to a file.
<?php
/**
* fixMSWord
*
* Replace ASCII chars with UTF-8. Note there are ASCII characters that don't
* correctly map and will be replaced by spaces.
*
* @author Robin Cafolla
* @date 2013-03-22
*/
function fixMSWord($string) {
$map = Array(
'33' => '!', '34' => '"', '35' => '#', '36' => '$', '37' => '%', '38' => '&', '39' => "'", '40' => '(', '41' => ')', '42' => '*',
'43' => '+', '44' => ',', '45' => '-', '46' => '.', '47' => '/', '48' => '0', '49' => '1', '50' => '2', '51' => '3', '52' => '4',
'53' => '5', '54' => '6', '55' => '7', '56' => '8', '57' => '9', '58' => ':', '59' => ';', '60' => '<', '61' => '=', '62' => '>',
'63' => '?', '64' => '@', '65' => 'A', '66' => 'B', '67' => 'C', '68' => 'D', '69' => 'E', '70' => 'F', '71' => 'G', '72' => 'H',
'73' => 'I', '74' => 'J', '75' => 'K', '76' => 'L', '77' => 'M', '78' => 'N', '79' => 'O', '80' => 'P', '81' => 'Q', '82' => 'R',
'83' => 'S', '84' => 'T', '85' => 'U', '86' => 'V', '87' => 'W', '88' => 'X', '89' => 'Y', '90' => 'Z', '91' => '[', '92' => '\\',
'93' => ']', '94' => '^', '95' => '_', '96' => '`', '97' => 'a', '98' => 'b', '99' => 'c', '100'=> 'd', '101'=> 'e', '102'=> 'f',
'103'=> 'g', '104'=> 'h', '105'=> 'i', '106'=> 'j', '107'=> 'k', '108'=> 'l', '109'=> 'm', '110'=> 'n', '111'=> 'o', '112'=> 'p',
'113'=> 'q', '114'=> 'r', '115'=> 's', '116'=> 't', '117'=> 'u', '118'=> 'v', '119'=> 'w', '120'=> 'x', '121'=> 'y', '122'=> 'z',
'123'=> '{', '124'=> '|', '125'=> '}', '126'=> '~', '127'=> ' ', '128'=> '€', '129'=> ' ', '130'=> ',', '131'=> ' ', '132'=> '"',
'133'=> '.', '134'=> ' ', '135'=> ' ', '136'=> '^', '137'=> ' ', '138'=> ' ', '139'=> '<', '140'=> ' ', '141'=> ' ', '142'=> ' ',
'143'=> ' ', '144'=> ' ', '145'=> "'", '146'=> "'", '147'=> '"', '148'=> '"', '149'=> '.', '150'=> '-', '151'=> '-', '152'=> '~',
'153'=> ' ', '154'=> ' ', '155'=> '>', '156'=> ' ', '157'=> ' ', '158'=> ' ', '159'=> ' ', '160'=> ' ', '161'=> '¡', '162'=> '¢',
'163'=> '£', '164'=> '¤', '165'=> '¥', '166'=> '¦', '167'=> '§', '168'=> '¨', '169'=> '©', '170'=> 'ª', '171'=> '«', '172'=> '¬',
'173'=> '', '174'=> '®', '175'=> '¯', '176'=> '°', '177'=> '±', '178'=> '²', '179'=> '³', '180'=> '´', '181'=> 'µ', '182'=> '¶',
'183'=> '·', '184'=> '¸', '185'=> '¹', '186'=> 'º', '187'=> '»', '188'=> '¼', '189'=> '½', '190'=> '¾', '191'=> '¿', '192'=> 'À',
'193'=> 'Á', '194'=> 'Â', '195'=> 'Ã', '196'=> 'Ä', '197'=> 'Å', '198'=> 'Æ', '199'=> 'Ç', '200'=> 'È', '201'=> 'É', '202'=> 'Ê',
'203'=> 'Ë', '204'=> 'Ì', '205'=> 'Í', '206'=> 'Î', '207'=> 'Ï', '208'=> 'Ð', '209'=> 'Ñ', '210'=> 'Ò', '211'=> 'Ó', '212'=> 'Ô',
'213'=> 'Õ', '214'=> 'Ö', '215'=> '×', '216'=> 'Ø', '217'=> 'Ù', '218'=> 'Ú', '219'=> 'Û', '220'=> 'Ü', '221'=> 'Ý', '222'=> 'Þ',
'223'=> 'ß', '224'=> 'à', '225'=> 'á', '226'=> 'â', '227'=> 'ã', '228'=> 'ä', '229'=> 'å', '230'=> 'æ', '231'=> 'ç', '232'=> 'è',
'233'=> 'é', '234'=> 'ê', '235'=> 'ë', '236'=> 'ì', '237'=> 'í', '238'=> 'î', '239'=> 'ï', '240'=> 'ð', '241'=> 'ñ', '242'=> 'ò',
'243'=> 'ó', '244'=> 'ô', '245'=> 'õ', '246'=> 'ö', '247'=> '÷', '248'=> 'ø', '249'=> 'ù', '250'=> 'ú', '251'=> 'û', '252'=> 'ü',
'253'=> 'ý', '254'=> 'þ', '255'=> 'ÿ'
);
$search = Array();
$replace = Array();
foreach ($map as $s => $r) {
$search[] = chr((int)$s);
$replace[] = $r;
}
return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
}