Store Arabic or Urdu in MySQL Using PHP

Often there are times when we have to store / retrieve a language other than the English language, so in order to do this and in a very easy manner i have found a way to solve this problem.

What i do , i simple map non English characters to numeric HTML equivalents and save them to MySQL and on retrieving form MySQL i map them back.

<?php
public function convertUrduForMySQL($urdu){

    $map = array(0x0, 0x2FFFF, 0, 0xFFFF);

    return  mb_decode_numericentity($urdu, $map, 'UTF-8');
    
    //Return encoded data that can be stored in MySQL
}

public function convertBackToUrduFromMySQL($encodedDataFromMySQL){

    $map = array(0x0, 0x2FFFF, 0, 0xFFFF);

    return mb_encode_numericentity($encodedDataFromMySQL, $map, 'UTF-8');

    // Convert back to Urdu
}

?>

and a simple usage example would be like it

public function usage(){

    $urdu="میں نے روبوٹ اور روبالہ پر آپ کا تجزیہ دیکھا ہے";
    
    $encodedDataFromMySQL=$this->convertUrduForMySQL($urdu);

    echo $encodedDataFromMySQL."<hr>";

    $urdu=$this->convertBackToUrduFromMySQL($encodedDataFromMySQL);

    echo $urdu;
}

output of the above code will be

میں نے روبوٹ اور روبالہ پر آپ کا تجزیہ دیکھا ہے


میں نے روبوٹ اور روبالہ پر آپ کا تجزیہ دیکھا ہے

although there are other ways to do this but to me it is very simple and quick and hope same for you :)