If you are looking for a function to replace special characters with the hex-utf-8 value (e.g. für Webservice-Security/WSS4J compliancy) you might use this:
$textstart = "Größe";
$utf8 ='';
$max = strlen($txt);
for ($i = 0; $i < $max; $i++) {
if ($txt{i} == "&"){
$neu = "&x26;";
}
elseif ((ord($txt{$i}) < 32) or (ord($txt{$i}) > 127)){
$neu = urlencode(utf8_encode($txt{$i}));
$neu = preg_replace('#\%(..)\%(..)\%(..)#','&#x\1;&#x\2;&#x\3;',$neu);
$neu = preg_replace('#\%(..)\%(..)#','&#x\1;&#x\2;',$neu);
$neu = preg_replace('#\%(..)#','&#x\1;',$neu);
}
else {
$neu = $txt{$i};
}
$utf8 .= $neu;
} // for $i
$textnew = $utf8;
In this example $textnew will be "Größe"
