php write hebrew / UTF-8 in csv

Question

Hi I am trying to write a CSV with HEBREW text in it. It writes some symbol not an Hebrew text. Below is my PHP CODE.

<?php
 $list = array (
 array('שלטל', 'שלטל', 'שלטל', 'שלטל'),
 array('123', '456', '789'),
 array('"שלטל"', '"שלטל"')
 );
 $fp = fopen('file.csv', 'w');
 //fputs($fp, $bom =( chr(0xEF) . chr(0xBB) . chr(0xBF) ));
 foreach ($list as $fields) {
 fputcsv($fp, $fields);
 }
 fclose($fp);
?>

I checked in internet and added "fputs($fp, $bom =( chr(0xEF) . chr(0xBB) . chr(0xBF) ))" but it didnt work out. Can some one help me.

Below is the out put i am getting.

enter image description here

Answer 1

Just ran your code. The text is correctly encoded and generated csv is valid. Opening the CSV in a text editor that supports Hebrew text will show correctly. To open CSV containing Hebrew you need to follow instructions as suggested here

Update:

So turns out MS uses UTF-16 and not only that it uses UTF-16LE (little endian). For MS CSV to open correctly, you need UTF-16LE encoded text, tab delimited file.

$list = array (
 array('שלטל', 'שלטל', 'שלטל', 'שלטל'),
 array('123', '456', '789'),
 array('"שלטל"', '"שלטל"')
 );
$fp = fopen('file.csv', 'w');
//UTF-16LE BOM
fputs($fp, chr(0xFF) . chr(0xFE));
foreach ($list as $fields) {
 $out = '';
 foreach ($fields as $k => $v){
 $fields[$k] = mb_convert_encoding($v, 'UTF-16LE', 'UTF-8'); 
 }
 // UTF-16LE tab
 $out = implode(chr(0x09).chr(0x00), $fields);
 // UTF-16LE new line
 fputs($fp, $out.chr(0x0A).chr(0x00));
}
fclose($fp);

Above code works, not sure about its efficiency though.

• DonOfDen: But when i use Codeigniter "PHPExcel" The output come in Hebrew without changing any settings. So i need such solutions. U know we cant tell all the users to follow the steps to see the data! Is there any other way??
• mani: @TomPHP so after a lot of playing around, i believe i have a solution. update answer.

Answer 2

I think I've encountered this before and sometimes some versions of excel just isn't showing proper utf8 characters/fonts. but the file itself have utf8 already.

Try opening your csv into Notepad++ and see if it is a utf8-bom and if its showing utf8 characters

• DonOfDen: nope its not working with BOM.. I tried already.. Also i cant insist all users to user Nodepad++ because the default software they will have are ms-excell installed.. So I am looking for a solution to open it in msoffice ..
• fedmich: No need to insist user to use npp. I mentioned it so you can check it once using it. anyway, you found a solution! Way to go!

Answer 3

Try this alternative saving as CSV:

$data = "שם פרטי,שם משפחה,עיר\na,b,c\n1,2,3"; // need to use " for \n
file_put_contents("myexcel.csv","\xEF\xBB\xBF"); // BOM with UTF-8 to csv
file_put_contents("myexcel.csv",$data,FILE_APPEND); // add more data

Hope it helps.