UTF-8 Support

From PhpCOIN Documentation

Contents 1 UTF-8 "Out of the Box" 2 Enable UTF-8 Output 3 Specify Allowed UTF-8 Characters 4 Disable UTF-8 Anti-Hack Code

UTF-8 "Out of the Box"

Some hackers use multi-byte encoding to circumvent website security. phpCOIN is aware of this, so normally it will NOT support multi-byte character sets for input. This is fine if your site is in English, but not if you happen to be in, for example, Japanese or any other language requiring multi-byte character support.

phpCOIN will, however, support UTF-8 for both input and output with some minor modifications:

• To enable phpCOIN v1.2.4 and lower to accept and display "special" characters that are usually encoded in UTF-8 you must manually edit source code files according to [this post] on our support forums.
• To enable phpCOIN v1.2.5 to v1.3.0 to accept and display "special" characters that are usually encoded in UTF-8, you need to do three things:
  • Enable UTF-8 Output
  • Specify Allowed UTF-8 Characters, and
  • Disable UTF-8 Anti-Hack Code
• To enable phpCOIN v1.3.1 to accept and display "special" characters that are usually encoded in UTF-8, you need to do two things:
  • Enable UTF-8 Output, and
  • Specify Allowed UTF-8 Characters
• To enable phpCOIN v1.4.0 and higher to accept and display "special" characters that are usually encoded in UTF-8, you need to do one thing:
  • Enable UTF-8 Output

Enable UTF-8 Output

In /config.php change $_CCFG['ISO_CHARSET'] from 'iso-8859-1' to 'UTF-8'

Specify Allowed UTF-8 Characters

In config.php add the special characters you want to display or accept as input to $_CCFG['SPECIAL_CHARS']

For example:

$_CCFG['SPECIAL_CHARS'] = 'æøå';

Disable UTF-8 Anti-Hack Code

The following applies only to phpCOIN v1.3.0 and lower. phpCOIN v1.3.1 and higher have already performed this step for you.

Several files in phpCOIN have a single line of code that eliminates UTF-8 input. The line may appear only once in a file, or it may appear multiple times. The line is

 while($var != utf8_decode($var)) {$var = utf8_decode($var);}

You must look in the following files, around the line numbers indicated, and COMMENT OUT the line shown above:

/error.php				line 26, 43

/coin_includes/session_admin.php	line 22, 54, 81
/coin_includes/session_user.php		line 22, 53, 81
/coin_includes/session_set.php		line 72, 114, 142, 163

/coin_modules/whois/details.php		line 7, 25

/coin_setup/setup.php			line 43, 59
/coin_setup/upgrade_to_v11x.php		line 34, 51
/coin_setup/upgrade_to_v120.php		line 34, 51