title: PHP: json_encode and json_decode with UTF-8
body: <p>I have the following array:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Array
  (
      [1] =&gt; Array
          (
              [time] =&gt; 07:30
              [event] =&gt; Celebrity Organ Recital &amp;acirc;€“ Sophie-V&amp;Atilde;&amp;copy;ronique Cauchefer-Choplin
          )
  )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(original event string is: "Celebrity Organ Recital – Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin", I used htmlentities with ENT_QUOTES)</p>
  
  <p>When I use json_encode the event string is returned as NULL, and it's saved as an empty string in MySQL.</p>
  
  <p>If I don't use htmlentities. I will get this in my database: "Celebrity Organ Recital u2013 Sophie-Vu00e9ronique Cauchefer-Choplin". I used many methods but I still can't convert this string back to its original.</p>
  
  <p>I really need some helps on this, I hope you could give me a solution to encode an UTF-8 string like the above one in json, then save it to MySQL, and then decode back to its original. I searched for a while but still can't find a solution.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you so much!</p>