Strange character (Â) appearing in our form answer. RESOLVED

  • AA_C
    Asked on August 11, 2015 at 10:48 AM

    No my trial application form there is a section to select up to 4 judges for an event. 

    When we receive the filled form back there is an extra character (Â) beside each judges name;

    See an example here from an email where two judges have been selected.

     

    Judge 1 Â Gurr, Nicki, BC, M         

     Judge 2  Â Mckay, Rebecca, AB, M

    Judge 3           

    Judge 4  
    		 

    My form is embedded on a webpage at our site so that I can customize it. 

    formID=51914358490965

    or at our website which is the complete form: http://www.aac.ca/en/forms/TrialApps/index.php

     

    I have attempted to resolve this but have had no success. Here is one section of the drop down list for the first judge.

     

     

             

               

                 Select Judge 1

                 TBA

                 Alexander, Wendy, BC, M

                 Babij, Yvonne, BC, M

                 ETC for about 130 judges to select from.

    Where is this  coming from?

    Thankyou for the great support,

     

    Robert C

    AAC

    Page URL: http://www.aac.ca/en/forms/TrialApps/index.php
  • victormlj
    Replied on August 11, 2015 at 11:39 AM

    Hi,

     

    This is a common error and it has to do with the encoding in your page this is normally solve with one of the following:

    1. Don't use addslashes()! Use mysql_real_escape_string().  Be careful using strlen(), it may count the bytes and no the characters.

    2. Send a utf-8 header from php before you send any of the page's content: header("Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8");

    3. As soon as you connect to mysql, do a mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); to set the connection's encoding to utf-8, which is often necessary in php/mysql apps.

    4. You want this meta tag in the <head> section to be absolutely safe:
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

    Unfortunately I do not have access to clone your page and will not be able to test it out for you. If this does not help please let me know and I will try to find another solution.

     

     

  • AA_C
    Replied on August 11, 2015 at 1:20 PM

    Hello Victormlj

    At this time I do not send any data to our db.

    The only reason for using the .php extension is the use the include syntax to show another file in the form.

    I have added the meta tag and will try that out.

    Thank you for the feedback.

    Regards

    Robert 

  • victormlj
    Replied on August 11, 2015 at 2:10 PM

    Hi Robert,

     

    Please let me know if adding the header tag helps.

     

    Regards

    Victor M Larrea

  • BJoanna
    Replied on August 11, 2015 at 3:56 PM

    I have cloned and tested your form and I was not able to reproduce mentioned problem with character (Â) inside of email Notification.

    Strange character (Â) appearing in our form answer Screenshot 20

    Did you resolved your issue? If not can you please provide us more details about how you are getting that character? Also do you get them from all option in judges name dropdown list? 

    Looking forward to your reply.

     

  • AA_C
    Replied on August 11, 2015 at 7:34 PM
    Hi,
    I have not tried to send a form since I added the meta tag.
    I’m waiting for the next submission to come in.
    That could be tomorrow or next month.
    If nothing comes soon I will create a test.
    Thank you,
    Robert

    ...
  • Charlie
    Replied on August 12, 2015 at 2:21 AM

    Do update us when the meta tag works.

    We'll wait for your response.

    Thank you.

  • AA_C
    Replied on August 13, 2015 at 6:45 PM

    Hi and thank you, meta tag worked. Great support as usual.

    Robert