set global encoding in Zend Framework - zend-framework

Question

My bootstrap sets encoding for all views:
protected function _initView () {
$view = new Zend_View();
// snip...
$view->setEncoding('utf-8');
// snip...
return $view;
}
However, this does not set encoding for my form validators. The StringLength uses its default encoding (I'm not sure which that is) and it counts diacritics as two characters.
I know I can set the 'encoding' => 'utf-8' option when creating the validator, but it's kind of pesky to update all validators across my entire (huge) application. Is there a way to set the encoding for all validators at the same time?

Answer 1

You normally shouldn't have a problem with that if you've sent the Content-Type very early + defined it in the HTML-Document.
In PHP you can send the Encoding at the Entry-Point (which is in Zend Framework the "index.php"-File):
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' );
In your HTML-Layout you should place the META-Tag within your HEAD-Tag:
<!-- do this only in: HTML5 -->
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<!-- do this only in: HTML4 -->
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
And, of course, save every Source-File (HTML+PHP-Files) within the Project in UTF-8 (without BOM)

Answer 2

In ZF 1.1x the StringLength validator uses iconv_strlen:
int iconv_strlen(string $str [, string $charset = ini_set("iconv.internal_encoding")])
So one thing to try is to call ini_set (or iconv_set_encoding('internal_encoding', $encoding);).

Answer 3

May be a bit late, but this would be the full answer:
mb_internal_encoding('utf-8');
iconv_set_encoding('internal_encoding', 'utf-8');