A simple way to detect UTF-8/16/32 of file by its BOM (not work with string or file without BOM)
<?php
define ('UTF32_BIG_ENDIAN_BOM' , chr(0x00) . chr(0x00) . chr(0xFE) . chr(0xFF));
define ('UTF32_LITTLE_ENDIAN_BOM', chr(0xFF) . chr(0xFE) . chr(0x00) . chr(0x00));
define ('UTF16_BIG_ENDIAN_BOM' , chr(0xFE) . chr(0xFF));
define ('UTF16_LITTLE_ENDIAN_BOM', chr(0xFF) . chr(0xFE));
define ('UTF8_BOM' , chr(0xEF) . chr(0xBB) . chr(0xBF));
function detect_utf_encoding($filename) {
$text = file_get_contents($filename);
$first2 = substr($text, 0, 2);
$first3 = substr($text, 0, 3);
$first4 = substr($text, 0, 3);
if ($first3 == UTF8_BOM) return 'UTF-8';
elseif ($first4 == UTF32_BIG_ENDIAN_BOM) return 'UTF-32BE';
elseif ($first4 == UTF32_LITTLE_ENDIAN_BOM) return 'UTF-32LE';
elseif ($first2 == UTF16_BIG_ENDIAN_BOM) return 'UTF-16BE';
elseif ($first2 == UTF16_LITTLE_ENDIAN_BOM) return 'UTF-16LE';
}
?>
