Remove non-ascii characters from string

Php Problem Overview

I'm getting strange characters when pulling data from a website:

Â

How can I remove anything that isn't a non-extended ASCII character?

A more appropriate question can be found here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17115867/php-replace-all-non-alphanumeric-chars-for-all-languages-supported

Php Solutions

Solution 1 - Php

A regex replace would be the best option. Using $str as an example string and matching it using :print:, which is a POSIX Character Class:

$str = 'aAÂ';
$str = preg_replace('/[[:^print:]]/', '', $str); // should be aA

What :print: does is look for all printable characters. The reverse, :^print:, looks for all non-printable characters. Any characters that are not part of the current character set will be removed.

Note: Before using this method, you must ensure that your current character set is ASCII. POSIX Character Classes support both ASCII and Unicode and will match only according to the current character set. As of PHP 5.6, the default charset is UTF-8.

Solution 2 - Php

You want only ASCII printable characters?

use this:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
$str = "abqwrešđčžsff";
$res = preg_replace('/[^\x20-\x7E]/','', $str);
echo "($str)($res)";

Or even better, convert your input to utf8 and use phputf8 lib to translate 'not normal' characters into their ascii representation:

require_once('libs/utf8/utf8.php');
require_once('libs/utf8/utils/bad.php');
require_once('libs/utf8/utils/validation.php');
require_once('libs/utf8_to_ascii/utf8_to_ascii.php');

if(!utf8_is_valid($str))
{
  $str=utf8_bad_strip($str);
}

$str = utf8_to_ascii($str, '' );

Solution 3 - Php

$clearstring=filter_var($rawstring, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING, FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_HIGH);

Solution 4 - Php

Kind of related, we had a web application that had to send data to a legacy system that could only deal with the first 128 characters of the ASCII character set.

Solution we had to use was something that would "translate" as many characters as possible into close-matching ASCII equivalents, but leave anything that could not be translated alone.

Normally I would do something like this:

<?php
// transliterate
if (function_exists('iconv')) {
    $text = iconv('utf-8', 'us-ascii//TRANSLIT', $text);
    }
?>

... but that replaces everything that can't be translated into a question mark (?).

So we ended up doing the following. Check at the end of this function for (commented out) php regex that just strips out non-ASCII characters.

<?php
public function cleanNonAsciiCharactersInString($orig_text) {

    $text = $orig_text;
            
    // Single letters
    $text = preg_replace("/[∂άαáàâãªä]/u",      "a", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[∆лДΛдАÁÀÂÃÄ]/u",     "A", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ЂЪЬБъь]/u",           "b", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[βвВ]/u",            "B", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[çς©с]/u",            "c", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ÇС]/u",              "C", $text);        
    $text = preg_replace("/[δ]/u",             "d", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[éèêëέëèεе℮ёєэЭ]/u", "e", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ÉÈÊË€ξЄ€Е∑]/u",     "E", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[₣]/u",               "F", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[НнЊњ]/u",           "H", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ђћЋ]/u",            "h", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ÍÌÎÏ]/u",           "I", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[íìîïιίϊі]/u",       "i", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Јј]/u",             "j", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ΚЌК]/u",            'K', $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ќк]/u",             'k', $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ℓ∟]/u",             'l', $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Мм]/u",             "M", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ñηήηπⁿ]/u",            "n", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Ñ∏пПИЙийΝЛ]/u",       "N", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[óòôõºöοФσόо]/u", "o", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ÓÒÔÕÖθΩθОΩ]/u",     "O", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ρφрРф]/u",          "p", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[®яЯ]/u",              "R", $text); 
    $text = preg_replace("/[ГЃгѓ]/u",              "r", $text); 
    $text = preg_replace("/[Ѕ]/u",              "S", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ѕ]/u",              "s", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Тт]/u",              "T", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[τ†‡]/u",              "t", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[úùûüџμΰµυϋύ]/u",     "u", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[√]/u",               "v", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ÚÙÛÜЏЦц]/u",         "U", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Ψψωώẅẃẁщш]/u",      "w", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ẀẄẂШЩ]/u",          "W", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ΧχЖХж]/u",          "x", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ỲΫ¥]/u",           "Y", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ỳγўЎУуч]/u",       "y", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ζ]/u",              "Z", $text);
    
    // Punctuation
    $text = preg_replace("/[‚‚]/u", ",", $text);        
    $text = preg_replace("/[`‛′’‘]/u", "'", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[″“”«»„]/u", '"', $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[—–―−–‾⌐─↔→←]/u", '-', $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[  ]/u", ' ', $text);
    
    $text = str_replace("…", "...", $text);
    $text = str_replace("≠", "!=", $text);
    $text = str_replace("≤", "<=", $text);
    $text = str_replace("≥", ">=", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[‗≈≡]/u", "=", $text);
    

    // Exciting combinations    
    $text = str_replace("ыЫ", "bl", $text);
    $text = str_replace("℅", "c/o", $text);
    $text = str_replace("₧", "Pts", $text);
    $text = str_replace("™", "tm", $text);
    $text = str_replace("№", "No", $text);        
    $text = str_replace("Ч", "4", $text);                
    $text = str_replace("‰", "%", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[∙•]/u", "*", $text);
    $text = str_replace("‹", "<", $text);
    $text = str_replace("›", ">", $text);
    $text = str_replace("‼", "!!", $text);
    $text = str_replace("⁄", "/", $text);
    $text = str_replace("∕", "/", $text);
    $text = str_replace("⅞", "7/8", $text);
    $text = str_replace("⅝", "5/8", $text);
    $text = str_replace("⅜", "3/8", $text);
    $text = str_replace("⅛", "1/8", $text);        
    $text = preg_replace("/[‰]/u", "%", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Љљ]/u", "Ab", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[Юю]/u", "IO", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[ﬁﬂ]/u", "fi", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[зЗ]/u", "3", $text); 
    $text = str_replace("£", "(pounds)", $text);
    $text = str_replace("₤", "(lira)", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[‰]/u", "%", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[↨↕↓↑│]/u", "|", $text);
    $text = preg_replace("/[∞∩∫⌂⌠⌡]/u", "", $text);
    
    
    //2) Translation CP1252.
    $trans = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
    $trans['f'] = '&fnof;';    // Latin Small Letter F With Hook
    $trans['-'] = array(
        '&hellip;',     // Horizontal Ellipsis
        '&tilde;',      // Small Tilde
        '&ndash;'       // Dash
        );
    $trans["+"] = '&dagger;';    // Dagger
    $trans['#'] = '&Dagger;';    // Double Dagger         
    $trans['M'] = '&permil;';    // Per Mille Sign
    $trans['S'] = '&Scaron;';    // Latin Capital Letter S With Caron        
    $trans['OE'] = '&OElig;';    // Latin Capital Ligature OE
    $trans["'"] = array(
        '&lsquo;',  // Left Single Quotation Mark
        '&rsquo;',  // Right Single Quotation Mark
        '&rsaquo;', // Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
        '&sbquo;',  // Single Low-9 Quotation Mark
        '&circ;',   // Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent
        '&lsaquo;'  // Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
        );
    
    $trans['"'] = array(
        '&ldquo;',  // Left Double Quotation Mark
        '&rdquo;',  // Right Double Quotation Mark
        '&bdquo;',  // Double Low-9 Quotation Mark
        );
    
    $trans['*'] = '&bull;';    // Bullet
    $trans['n'] = '&ndash;';    // En Dash
    $trans['m'] = '&mdash;';    // Em Dash        
    $trans['tm'] = '&trade;';    // Trade Mark Sign
    $trans['s'] = '&scaron;';    // Latin Small Letter S With Caron
    $trans['oe'] = '&oelig;';    // Latin Small Ligature OE
    $trans['Y'] = '&Yuml;';    // Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis
    $trans['euro'] = '&euro;';    // euro currency symbol
    ksort($trans);

    foreach ($trans as $k => $v) {
        $text = str_replace($v, $k, $text);
    }

    // 3) remove <p>, <br/> ...
    $text = strip_tags($text);

    // 4) &amp; => & &quot; => '
    $text = html_entity_decode($text);

    
    // transliterate
    // if (function_exists('iconv')) {
    // $text = iconv('utf-8', 'us-ascii//TRANSLIT', $text);
    // }
    
    // remove non ascii characters
    // $text =  preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF]/', '', $text);      
    
    return $text;
}

?>

Solution 5 - Php

I also think that the best solution might be to use a regular expression.

Here's my suggestion:

function convert_to_normal_text($text) {

	$normal_characters = "a-zA-Z0-9\s`~!@#$%^&*()_+-={}|:;<>?,.\/\"\'\\\[\]";
	$normal_text = preg_replace("/[^$normal_characters]/", '', $text);
	
	return $normal_text;
}

Then you can use it like this:

$before = 'Some "normal characters": Abc123!+, some ASCII characters: ABC+ŤĎ and some non-ASCII characters: Ąąśćł.';
$after = convert_to_normal_text($before);
echo $after;

Displays:

Some "normal characters": Abc123!+, some ASCII characters: ABC+ and some non-ASCII characters: .

Solution 6 - Php

I just had to add the header

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

Solution 7 - Php

This should be pretty straight forwards and no need for iconv function:

// Remove all characters that are not the separator, a-z, 0-9, or whitespace
$string = preg_replace('![^'.preg_quote('-').'a-z0-_9\s]+!', '', strtolower($string));
// Replace all separator characters and whitespace by a single separator
$string = preg_replace('!['.preg_quote('-').'\s]+!u', '-', $string);

Solution 8 - Php

I think the best way to do something like this is by using ord() command. This way you will be able to keep characters written in any language. Just remember to first test your text's ord results. This will not work on unicode.

$name="βγδεζηΘKgfgebhjrf!@#$%^&";    
//this function will clear all non greek and english characters on greek-iso charset        
function replace_characters($string)    
{    
   $str_length=strlen($string);    
   for ($x=0;$x<$str_length;$x++)    
      {    
		  $character=$string[$x];    
		  if ((ord($character)>64 && ord($character)<91) || (ord($character)>96 && ord($character)<123) || (ord($character)>192 && ord($character)<210) || (ord($character)>210 && ord($character)<218) || (ord($character)>219 && ord($character)<250) || ord($character)==252 || ord($character)==254)    
	         {    
				 $new_string=$new_string.$character;     
			 }    
	  }    
	  return $new_string;    
}    
//end function    

$name=replace_characters($name);    

echo $name;

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	LordZardeck	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Php	Chris Bornhoft	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Php	DamirR	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Php	Utopia	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Php	Silas Palmer	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Php	simhumileco	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Php	ALHaines	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Php	Goran Jakovljevic	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Php	websolutions.gr	View Answer on Stackoverflow