PHP json encode - Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded

The issue happens if there are some non-utf8 characters inside even though most of them are utf8 chars. This will remove any non-utf8 characters and now it works.

$data['name'] = mb_convert_encoding($data['name'], 'UTF-8', 'UTF-8');

If you have a multidimensional array to encode in JSON format then you can use below function:

If JSON_ERROR_UTF8 occurred :

$encoded = json_encode( utf8ize( $responseForJS ) );

Below function is used to encode Array data recursively

/* Use it for json_encode some corrupt UTF-8 chars * useful for = malformed utf-8 characters possibly incorrectly encoded by json_encode */function utf8ize( $mixed ) {    if (is_array($mixed)) {        foreach ($mixed as $key => $value) {            $mixed[$key] = utf8ize($value);        }    } elseif (is_string($mixed)) {        return mb_convert_encoding($mixed, "UTF-8", "UTF-8");    }    return $mixed;}

Please, make sure to initiate your Pdo object with the charset iso as utf8.This should fix this problem avoiding any re-utf8izing dance.

$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mybase;charset=utf8", 'user', 'password');