Change MySQL default character set to UTF-8 in my.cnf?

Question

Currently we are using the following commands in PHP to set the character set to UTF-8 in our application.

Since this is a bit of overhead, we\'d like to set this a

Answer 1

All settings listed here are correct, but here are the most optimal and sufficient solution:

[mysqld]
init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci'
character-set-server = utf8
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci

[client]
default-character-set = utf8

Add these to /etc/mysql/my.cnf.

Please note, I choose utf8_unicode_ci type of collation due to the performance issue.

The result is:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| 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/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name        | Value           |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+

And this is when you connect as non-SUPER user!

For example, the difference between connection as SUPER and non-SUPER user (of course in case of utf8_unicode_ci collation):

user with SUPER priv.:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name        | Value           |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci | <---
| collation_database   | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+

user with non-SUPER priv.:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name        | Value           |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+

I wrote a comprehensive article (rus) explaining in details why you should use one or the other option. All types of Character Sets and Collations are considered: for server, for database, for connection, for table and even for column.

I hope this and the article will help to clarify unclear moments.