title: Accented characters stored in MySQL database
body: <p>I have a webapp that stores French text -- which potentially includes accented characters -- in a MySQL database. When data is retrieved directly through PHP, accented characters become gibbirish. For instance: <code>qui r�fl�te la liste.</code></p>
  
  <p>Hence, I use <code>htmlentities()</code> (or <code>htmlspecialchars()</code> ) to convert the string to html entities, and all is fine. However, when I come to output data that contains both accented characters and HTML elements, things get more complicated. For instance, <code>&lt;strong&gt;</code> is converted to <code>&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;</code> and therefore not understood by the browser.</p>
  
  <p>How can I simultaneously get accented characters displayed correctly and my HTML parsed correctly?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you!</p>