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hi,i moved data from mysql 4 (they were originally set to latin2 encoding) to mysql 5 and set encoding to utf-8. It looks good in phpMyAdmin, utf-8 is ok. But there are question marks instead of some characters on website! website encoding is also set to utf8 so i dont understand where is the problem. PHP and HTML files are also set to utf8. I have no idea ...

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Oh, a classic! Like the day when the last IE6 instance is deleted, I will celebrate the day when the last PHP script is moved to PHP 6. (In this far, far future I can then tell my grandchildren about the ISO-8859 monster and its sidekick named Codepage.) – Boldewyn Nov 10 '09 at 13:05
im sorry but I of course tried SET NAMES 'utf8' ..on database, didnt help. :( – perfectDay Nov 10 '09 at 13:08
Well, you have to execute that query every time your script connects to the database before you execute other queries... – Franz Nov 10 '09 at 13:14
Related question with excellent answer on all the things you need to check: stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through – mercator Nov 11 '09 at 22:10

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

try query

SET NAMES utf8

before any query in your application

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not neccessary. Setting db encoding to utf8 and without using SET NAMES works fine for my application. – thephpdeveloper Nov 10 '09 at 13:03
Yep, most common problem. The check your client encoding or set it with the SQL Command valya already posted. It is enough to add it before every block of statements that you send at once. – Mario Mueller Nov 10 '09 at 13:04
@Mauris, of course, your way is better and faster, but mine is the most simple solution which can be archieved in every language and environment without rtfm :) – valya Nov 10 '09 at 13:10
Are the question marks inserted by the database or the browser? I always forget that part... ;) – Franz Nov 10 '09 at 13:13
up vote 2 down vote

Try setting the MySQL connection to UTF-8:

SET NAMES 'utf8'

And send explicit UTF-8 headers, just in case your server has some other default settings:

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
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up vote 0 down vote

You don't have to set your PHP and HTML files to utf-8.

You just have to set your output encoding to UTF-8 and the browser will display appropriately.

In HTML:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

In PHP:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

When you get a string that is UTF-8 from the MySQL table, it will be UTF-8 all the way to browser output unless you convert the encoding. It's the way that the browser inteprets it.

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If you store special characters in your PHP scripts, make sure your scripts are UTF-8 encoded or they won't display correctly. Some IDEs do this automatically and it IS a requirement – David Caunt Nov 10 '09 at 13:24
up vote 0 down vote

I had this problem recently (I hope its the same problem you are having), I tried many ways but at the end what worked was really simple.

Convert your dumped SQL file to UTF-8 format and then import it.

BW: I used Notepad++ for the conversion.

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up vote 0 down vote

Put .htaccess file in your web-site root with content: AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

and

in your dbconfig set after connection to db:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

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