Special characters from MySQL 4.0 => PHP => Flash

If you are using MySQL 4.0, you would probably notice that your special characters such as å Â are converted to a form like "&#2345."

In order to pass these characters using PHP into Flash, you need to use the following function to convert them back to UTF-8:

function unichr($dec) {
  if ($dec < 128) {
   $utf = chr($dec);
  } else if ($dec < 2048) {
   $utf = chr(192 + (($dec - ($dec % 64)) / 64));
   $utf .= chr(128 + ($dec % 64));
  } else {
   $utf = chr(224 + (($dec - ($dec % 4096)) / 4096));
   $utf .= chr(128 + ((($dec % 4096) - ($dec % 64)) / 64));
   $utf .= chr(128 + ($dec % 64));
  }
  return $utf;
}

Use the function this way:

preg_replace("/&#(\d{2,5});/e", "unichr($1);", substr($str,4));

*IMPORTANT* DO NOT use the System.useCodepage=true solution!