PHP Transliteration

Q: Can I convert non-ASCII characters to their ASCII equivalents in PHP?

A: Yes, you can use the iconv function with the transliteration encoding to do this.

The transliteration encoding in iconv allows you to approximate non-ASCII characters using similar-looking ASCII characters. This is useful for generating URLs that contain only ASCII characters.

Here's an example of how to use iconv with transliteration:

$string = "こんにちは";
$result = iconv("UTF-8", "ASCII//TRANSLIT", $string);
echo $result; // Output: konnichiwa

In this example, the UTF-8 encoded string is converted to ASCII using transliteration. The resulting string contains only ASCII characters and still resembles the original string.

Here's a complete example that matches your use case of displaying ASCII-only URLs:

$url = "https://example.com/にほんご";
$asciiUrl = iconv("UTF-8", "ASCII//TRANSLIT", $url);
echo "Visit our website";

This will generate a URL that contains only ASCII characters and will still redirect users to the intended page.