I tried quite a lot of things. Everything is working except this spanish character issue. The below is the first instance where I get the row data from Zend GData API.

$row=$Col->getText(); //getText is the Google API that returns the value in the row.
print “$row”; // I print the content

When I print it, it does not display the special characters properly.

I tried various different things such as edit the PHP file and add:

mbstring.language = Neutral ; Set default language to Neutral(UTF-8) (default)
mbstring.internal_encoding = UTF-8 ; Set default internal encoding to UTF-8
mbstring.encoding_translation = On ; HTTP input encoding translation is enabled
mbstring.http_input = auto ; Set HTTP input character set dectection to auto
mbstring.http_output = UTF-8 ; Set HTTP output encoding to UTF-8
mbstring.detect_order = auto ; Set default character encoding detection order to auto
mbstring.substitute_character = none ; Do not print invalid characters
default_charset = UTF-8 ; Default character set for auto content type header
mbstring.func_overload = 7 ; All non-multibyte-safe functions are overloaded with the mbstring alternatives

Add in the below in MySql

init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci; SET NAMES utf8;’
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

Change Database and Table properties

ALTER DATABASE db_name
CHARACTER SET utf8
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_general_ci
DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci
;

ALTER TABLE tbl_name
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_general_ci
;

Call SETNAMES etc just after mysql open connection.

$q=”SET NAMES ‘utf8′”;
$r=mysql_query($q);
mysql_query(“SET CHARACTER SET utf8”);

But nothing seems to work. I guess I have another frustrating day ahead of me.

$row=$Col->getText();
print “$row”;

so something like ñer gets displayed as ñer.

when I try and put the data in MySql. Same problem. I have changed my php.ini file, mysql settings. Everything really. I can give details of the settings. But nothing seems to work for me.