Is is possible to use non-Uniocde (non-UTF8) database with YIi, specifically for the REST? Is Encoding possible?

I have WIN1257 Firebird database which I am trying to use with Yii extension. That technically works, but there are problems with encoding. Specifically - REST GET request gives error when varchar fields contain non-latin symbols:


{

  "name": "Exception",

  "message": "Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded.",

  "code": 5,

  "type": "yii\\base\\InvalidParamException",

  "file": "C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\helpers\\BaseJson.php",

  "line": 123,

  "stack-trace": [

    "#0 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\helpers\\BaseJson.php(61): yii\\helpers\\BaseJson::handleJsonError(5)",

    "#1 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\web\\JsonResponseFormatter.php(89): yii\\helpers\\BaseJson::encode(Array, 320)",

    "#2 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\web\\JsonResponseFormatter.php(73): yii\\web\\JsonResponseFormatter->formatJson(Object(yii\\web\\Response))",

    "#3 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\web\\Response.php(948): yii\\web\\JsonResponseFormatter->format(Object(yii\\web\\Response))",

    "#4 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\web\\Response.php(312): yii\\web\\Response->prepare()",

    "#5 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\vendor\\yiisoft\\yii2\\base\\Application.php(381): yii\\web\\Response->send()",

    "#6 C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\myproject\\web\\index.php(12): yii\\base\\Application->run()",

    "#7 {main}"

  ]

}

So - the question is - is there possible to extend some class and to make WIN1257-Unicode conversion when data are read from database and make Unicode-WIN1257 conversion before data are saved to database. I guess that large parts of the Yii can handle non-Unicode data but REST-JSON requires all the data to be in Unicode format.

The solution is to use convert functions in afterFind and beforeSave methods. For now it works and I hope that there will be no other problems.