charset problem in php

[john_zakaria]

i'm returning data from database , the charset used in my website is

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1256" />

so everything is displayed well..

but the problem is when i return data from database which uses charset=tf8-8 is it displayed for me like '????????????????'

i looked at php manual and i sued this code which returns the data correctly

$connection = mysql_connect($DBhost, $DBuser);
mysql_query("set names utf8", $connection); 

and also at the same time i changed the charset to

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

it works well but the rest of the page returns

Œأ¦أ‘أŒ
أ£أ*أ¤أ‡
أچأ“أ‡


1- so how to make a specific charset in a part of the page and the rest of the page uses another charset????

2- the code

$connection = mysql_connect($DBhost, $DBuser);
mysql_query("set names utf8", $connection); 

affect on the rest of the page and returns also
Œأ¦أ‘أŒ
أ£أ*أ¤أ‡
أچأ“أ‡
note that i use another connection and another table

    $ii=mysql_connect($DBhost,$DBuser,$DBpass); 

but the line
[php]
mysql_query("set names utf8", $connection);

[php] make a problem .. how to fix this problems????

[NogDog]

I'm not aware of any way to mix character sets on a single web page. If possible, I would try to make everything UTF-8 for maximum flexibility and portability. This article may be of some use if you go that route.