public static function convertToUTF8($str)
    {
        $encoding = mb_detect_encoding($str, ['UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', 'WINDOWS-1252'], true);

        switch ($encoding) {
            case 'ISO-8859-1':
                $newStr = utf8_encode($str);
                break;
            /* Unreachable code. Not sure yet how we can improve this
             * situation.
            case 'WINDOWS-1252' :
                $newStr = iconv('cp1252', 'UTF-8', $str);
                break;
             */
            default:
                 $newStr = $str;
        }

        // Removing any control characters
        return preg_replace('%(?:[\x00-\x08\x0B-\x0C\x0E-\x1F\x7F])%', '', $newStr);
    }