PHP UTF-8 Validation Library

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lawrence k wrote:

What PHP code would give me this kind of 100% certainty?

I was bored so wrote this. I’m quite proud of myself, as I wrote it and ran it and it worked first time! 🙂

It not only checks that the UTF-8 is valid, it forces it to be valid.


* @copyright Copyright (C) 2007 Toby Inkster
* @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lgpl.html GNU Lesser General Public Licence
*/

/**
* Utlity function to retrieve the first byte from a string.
*
* Note this function has a side-effect. As well as returning the
* first byte of the string, it also modifies the string passed
* as a parameter to remove the initial byte.
*
* @param string $string String to shift.
* @return string First byte of string.
*/
function shift_byte (&$string)
{
if (strlen($string)<1) return FALSE; $byte = substr($string, 0, 1); $string = substr($string, 1); return $byte; } /** * Validate a string as UTF-8, and modify the string to remove nasties. * * Note this function has a side-effect. As well as returning a * boolean to indicate whether the given string was valid, it also * modifies the string replacing any invalid characters with a * replacement character. (The replacement character is a question * mark, but you can change this if you like.) * * Note that in UTF-8, most characters have several alternative * representations. RFC 3629 says that the shortest representation * is the correct one. Other representations ("overlong forms") * are not valid. Earlier UTF-8 specifications did not prohibit * overlong forms, though suggest emitting a warning when one is * encountered. This function DOES NOT CHECK FOR OVERLONG FORMS! * * @param string $string String to validate. * @return boolean Was the string valid or not? */ function validate_utf8 (&$string) { $new = ''; $valid = TRUE; $replacement = '?'; /* Loop through each UTF-8 character. */ while (strlen($string)) { /* Array of bytes to store this character. */ $c = array(); /* Firstly, assume that a character is a single byte. */ $c[0] = shift_byte($string); /* "Seven Z" notation. */ if (ord($c[0]) <= 0x7F) { $new .= $c[0]; } /* "Five Y, Six Z" notation. */ elseif ((ord($c[0]) >= 0xC2) && (ord($c[0]) <= 0xDF)) { $c[1] = shift_byte($string); if ((ord($c[1]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[1]) <= 0xBF)) { $new .= $c[0].$c[1]; } else { $new .= $replacement; $valid = FALSE; } } /* "Four X, Six Y, Six Z" notation. */ elseif ((ord($c[0]) >= 0xE0) && (ord($c[0]) <= 0xEF)) { $c[1] = shift_byte($string); $c[2] = shift_byte($string); if ((ord($c[1]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[1]) <= 0xBF) && (ord($c[2]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[2]) <= 0xBF)) { $new .= $c[0].$c[1].$c[2]; } else { $new .= $replacement; $valid = FALSE; } } /* "Three W, Six X, Six Y, Six Z" notation. */ elseif ((ord($c[0]) >= 0xF0) && (ord($c[0]) <= 0xF4)) { $c[1] = shift_byte($string); $c[2] = shift_byte($string); $c[3] = shift_byte($string); if ((ord($c[1]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[1]) <= 0xBF) && (ord($c[2]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[2]) <= 0xBF) && (ord($c[3]) >= 0x80) && (ord($c[3]) <= 0xBF)) { $new .= $c[0].$c[1].$c[2].$c[3]; } else { $new .= $replacement; $valid = FALSE; } } else { $new .= $replacement; $valid = FALSE; } } $string = $new; return $valid; } 1?>