PHP, ODBC, and nvarchar

By  on  

I stumbled upon an odd error using PHP's ODBC functions to query a SQL Server 2005 database. I was doing a basic SELECT statement to get the description of something when I encountered the following error:

Warning: odbc_exec() [function.odbc-exec]: SQL error: [unixODBC][FreeTDS][SQL Server]Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier., SQL state in SQLExecDirect in /home/web/file.php on line 4

It turns out that the PHP ODBC functions have a hard time pulling "nvarchar" data. Here's the ugly solution to getting nvarchar data:

SELECT CAST(CAST([DetailedDescription] AS VARCHAR(8000)) AS TEXT) AS ad FROM mytable WHERE active = 1

Not pretty but making it function is what counts.

Recent Features

  • By
    Detect DOM Node Insertions with JavaScript and CSS Animations

    I work with an awesome cast of developers at Mozilla, and one of them in Daniel Buchner. Daniel's shared with me an awesome strategy for detecting when nodes have been injected into a parent node without using the deprecated DOM Events API.

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Simple News Scroller Using MooTools, Part I:  The Basics

    News scroller have been around forever on the internet. Why? Because they're usually classy and effective. Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a simple scroller and making it into a flexible, portable class. We have to crawl before we...

  • By
    AJAX For Evil:  Spyjax with jQuery

    Last year I wrote a popular post titled AJAX For Evil: Spyjax when I described a technique called "Spyjax": Spyjax, as I know it, is taking information from the user's computer for your own use — specifically their browsing habits. By using CSS and JavaScript, I...

Discussion

  1. THANKS!!!
    muchas gracias.. ahora puedo seguir trabajando tranquilo.. justamante estaba teniendo problemas con un campo nvarchar.

  2. umberleigh

    Casting to varchar limits you to 8000 characters in a field.

    I found just casting to text works better, like so:

    print("SELECT CAST([column_name] AS TEXT) AS column_0 FROM table_name");
  3. Thanks , nice solve problem from sql server

  4. San

    Cast did the job ….

    Nice post !!!

  5. mohi

    not work!

    Warning: mssql_query() [function.mssql-query]: message: Incorrect syntax near ‘ASâ’. (severity 15) in /var/www/vhosts/fvc.ir/httpdocs/mssql.php on line 11

  6. Thank you very very much!
    And here is how to write value:
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7255703/utf-8-in-sql-server-2008-database-php

    $value = 'ŽČŘĚÝÁÖ';
    $value = iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-16LE', $value); //convert into native encoding 
    $value = bin2hex($value); //convert into hexadecimal
    $query = 'INSERT INTO some_table (some_nvarchar_field)  VALUES(CONVERT(nvarchar(MAX), 0x'.$value.'))';
    
  7. thanks a lot. i was not shure what was the problem. In the sql management studio the data looks fine and in php is not. my first impresion was user rights for the data .. but after 1 hour of hair pulling :) i wandered if culd be the odbc … and like this i found your post

    thanks again

  8. Riyas

    Thanks for this solution. I was stuck at this problem and finally reached here

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!