set mysql to utf8 encoding

70 down vote

For recent version of MySQL default-character-set = utf8 causes a problem, it's deprecated I think. as Justin Ball says in "Upgrade to MySQL 5.5.12 and now MySQL won’t start, you should: Remove that directive and you should be good. Then your configuration file ('/etc/my.cnf' for example) should look like that: [mysqld] collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci init-connect='SET NAMES utf8' character-set-server = utf8 Restart MySQL. For making sure, your MySQL is UTF8, Run the following queries in your MySQL prompt: First query: mysql> show variables like 'char%'; The output should look like: +--------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +--------------------------+---------------------------------+ | character_set_client | utf8 | | character_set_connection | utf8 | | character_set_database | utf8 | | character_set_filesystem | binary | | character_set_results | utf8 | | character_set_server | utf8 | | character_set_system | utf8 | | character_sets_dir | /usr/local/mysql/share/charsets/| +--------------------------+---------------------------------+ Second query: mysql> show variables like 'collation%'; and the query output is +----------------------+-----------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +----------------------+-----------------+ | collation_connection | utf8_general_ci | | collation_database | utf8_unicode_ci | | collation_server | utf8_unicode_ci | +----------------------+-----------------+ Changing the existed database to the utf8 encoding: Use the ALTER DATABASE and ALTER TABLE commands. ALTER DATABASE databasename CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci; ALTER TABLE tablename CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;