Thread

I recently upgraded to 2.7.1 from 2.5.x, and now the Channel Form tag is triggering an “undefined constant MB_ENABLED” PHP error notice.

The following code is enough to reproduce this:

{exp:channel:form channel="my_channel_name"}
Hi!
{/exp:channel:form}

And the error message is as follows:

A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: Notice
Message: Use of undefined constant MB_ENABLED - assumed 'MB_ENABLED'
Filename: libraries/Encrypt.php
Line Number: 367

I’ve traced this back to the CI_Utf8 constructor (in /system/codeigniter/system/core/Utf8.php:47), where if the UTF-8 support test fails, the MB_ENABLED constant is never defined. This seems to be a bug.

In my case, this particular test fails:

$CFG->item('charset') == 'UTF-8'

The value of $CFG->item(‘charset’) is ‘utf-8’, not ‘UTF-8’. How do I change this?

I had the same problem.  Seeing your post, I changed line 47 in Utf8.php to:

AND $CFG->item('charset') == 'UTF-8' OR 'utf-8'

I’m not sure this is the ideal solution, but it seems to stop the errors

Thanks for replying. Editing core files is never ideal, of course.

I changed that part of the conditional to

AND preg_match('/^utf\-?8$/i', $CFG->item('charset'))
// accepts UTF-8, utf-8, utf8, etc..

Seeing as your errors went away this may not be an issue, but your conditional is incorrect. You are not comparing ‘utf-8’ to the config item, just treating it as a Boolean on it’s own; it it will always resolve as TRUE because ‘utf-8’ is a non-empty string, even if the other tests fail:

if (FALSE AND FALSE AND FALSE OR 'utf-8') {
// the above is truthy, this block will always execute
}

Write it like this:

AND ($CFG->item('charset') == 'UTF-8' OR $CFG->item('charset') == 'utf-8')

I just upgraded from 2.5.x to 2.8.1, and am getting the same errors. I changed line 47 of /system/codeigniter/system/core/Utf8.php to “AND $CFG->item(‘charset’) == ‘UTF-8’ OR ‘utf-8’” and that got rid of the errors.

This StackExchange thread (http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/questions/15537/ee-upgrade-issue-mb-enabled) mentions the “iconv extension”. The client’s server doesn’t have iconv enabled and I don’t see this in the EECMS system reqs. Also, the server passed the ee wizard tests.

Is this an issue with EE or my server?