The problem occurs because your database is not configured to properly store emojis or special characters. To fix this, follow these steps:

1️⃣ Check the Table Charset

Run this command to check your table's current configuration:

SHOW CREATE TABLE your_table_name;

If the charset is set to utf8 (and not utf8mb4), then it does not support emojis.

✅ Solution: Convert the table to utf8mb4 with:

ALTER TABLE your_table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

If you want to change the entire database:

ALTER DATABASE your_database_name CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

2️⃣ Adjust the Connection in CakePHP

In the config/app.php file, check the database configuration and add:

'encoding' => 'utf8mb4',
'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
'flags' => [
    PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci'
],

3️⃣ If You Use .env

This is the example of what you should include in the database connection:

export DATABASE_URL="mysql://user:password@localhost/database_name?encoding=utf8mb4&collation=utf8mb4_unicode_ci"

Adjusting the Display in CakePHP

In the view file (.ctp or .php), try forcing the correct content display using h() or html_entity_decode():

< ?= h($post->conteudo) ?> 

If strange characters still appear, try:

< ?= html_entity_decode($post->conteudo, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') ?>

Or even:

< ?= mb_convert_encoding($post->conteudo, 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES') ?>

At the beginning of the code, I separated since it is a reserved keyword. That’s why it was formatted this way in this article.

Check the HTML Page Charset

In your default layout (default.ctp or default.php inside src/Template/Layout), make sure the encoding is correct:

< meta charset="UTF-8">

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