How to store Emoji Character in MySQL Database

Question

I am using Emoji character in my project. That characters are saved (??) into mysql database. I had used database Default collation in utf8mb4_general_ci. It sh

Answer 1

Both the databases and tables should have character set utf8mb4 and collation utf8mb4_unicode_ci.

When creating a new database you should use:

CREATE DATABASE mydb CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

If you have an existing database and you want to add support:

ALTER DATABASE database_name CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

You also need to set the correct character set and collation for your tables:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS table_name (
    ...
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

or change it if you've got existing tables with a lot of data:

ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

Note that utf8_general_ci is no longer recommended best practice. See the related Q & A:

What's the difference between utf8_general_ci and utf8_unicode_ci on Stack Overflow.