PHP: Convert UTF-8 to Hex Codepoint values (Unicode Hexidecimal)

January 16, 2008

This is one of those strange things that sounds a lot easier to do than it is.

I originally handled this by exploding the character through this:

$array = preg_split('//u', $a);

This worked fine and the string was split into an array of unicode characters. The next part was converting it into a useful hexidecimal value.
$character = $array[0]; $value = hexdec(bin2hex($character));

I originally thought this was the way to do so – I was wrong, don’t do it. It turns out there is no real simple way to convert from UTF-8 to hex values. Instead, try the UTF8ToUnicode function here: http://hsivonen.iki.fi/php-utf8/

Include this function and use the author’s utf8ToUnicode function. It becomes simple then:
$value = utf8ToUnicode($character); $value = $value[0];

I am only posting this because of the sheer amount of time it took for me to find this information. I hope it helps you out.

Comments (1)

Simon says:

May 23, 2008 at 4:41 PM

Thanks for this!

I’d already found Henri Sivonen’s code, but your tale of success encouraged me to reassess it, after initally dismissing it.

I did have to convert the result to hex with dechex($value) at the end, and for some reason I also had to modify the utf8ToUnicode() function to accept the variable passed by value, but I now have everything I need.

Thanks again for posting!

About Me: Jawaad Mahmood: 30, Muslim, Canadian, freelance, doing consulting in Tokyo, Japan.

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PHP: Convert UTF-8 to Hex Codepoint values (Unicode Hexidecimal)

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