Correct encoding

[eluser]Dauntless[/eluser]
Hi,

Actually don't think that this is CI-related, but I'm asking anyway:

In a previous site I wrote with CI, there were a lot of (fe) french characters (like é, à, ç, etc) and each time those characters could come up, I printed them like this:

Code:

htmlentities($item->name, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8')

Now, this is a really annoying way; It's a lot of extra typing and easy to forget somewhere.

Is there a better way to do this, once and for all ?

I know that it also has to do with the way the data is stored in the DB, but when I just try

Code:

print 'àçé'

, the same icons (question-mark-icons) appear.

All help is appreciated!

Kind regards,
Dauntless