xml to php and parse encoding error

Question

I am parsing xml file from url(in code below), using file_get_contents() function, and simpleXML, to insert data into the table, i did well, but i have problem with encoding(russian words) i get this ->Черногория; file and database encoding is set to utf-8;

require_once 'mysql_connect.php';
/**
 *
 *
 */
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$sql = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `db_countries` (
   `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
   `countrykey` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
   `countryname` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
   `countrynamelat` varchar(500) NOT NULL default '',
   PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
   ) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8";

mysql_query($sql);

$data = file_get_contents("http://www2.turtess-online.com.ua/export/dictionary/countries/");
$xml  = new SimpleXMLElement($data);

echo $xml->body->dictionary->element["countryName"];

foreach ($xml->body->dictionary->element as $element) {
    $countryname    = mysql_real_escape_string($element["countryName"]);
    $countrynamelat = mysql_real_escape_string($element["countryNameLat"]);
    $countrykey     = $element["countryKey"];

    if ($countrykey) {
        $q      = $insert = 'INSERT INTO db_countries (countrykey, countryname, countrynamelat) VALUES ("' . $countrykey . '", "' . $countryname . '", "' . $countrynamelat . '")';
        mysql_query($q);
    } else {
        echo "not valid key of country";
    }
}

Answer 1

Make sure you insert Unicode content as well, database charset is not doing any "automagic" conversion.

As an alternative, I would suggest utf8_encode($countryname) as in :

if ($countrykey) {
    $q      = $insert = 'INSERT INTO db_countries (countrykey, countryname, countrynamelat) VALUES ("' . $countrykey . '", "' . cp1251_to_utf8($countryname) . '", "' . $countrynamelat . '")';
    mysql_query($q);
} else {
    echo "not valid key of country";
}

update : indeed, the XML source file shows a Windows 1251 charset

UPDATE(2) : i tested the code against this nifty little function and it works at last :)

function cp1251_to_utf8($s) 
   { 
   if ((mb_detect_encoding($s,'UTF-8,CP1251')) == "WINDOWS-1251") 
     { 
     $c209 = chr(209); $c208 = chr(208); $c129 = chr(129); 
     for($i=0; $i<strlen($s); $i++) 
       { 
       $c=ord($s[$i]); 
       if ($c>=192 and $c<=239) $t.=$c208.chr($c-48); 
       elseif ($c>239) $t.=$c209.chr($c-112); 
       elseif ($c==184) $t.=$c209.$c209; 
       elseif ($c==168)    $t.=$c208.$c129; 
       else $t.=$s[$i]; 
       } 
     return $t; 
     } 
   else 
     { 
     return $s; 
     } 
    }

credit goes to Martin Petrov