How do I see what character set a MySQL database / table / column is?

Question

What is the (default) charset for:

• MySQL database

• MySQL table

• MySQL column

Answer 1

As many wrote earlier, SHOW FULL COLUMNS should be the preferred method to get column information. What's missing is a way to get charset after that without reaching metadata tables directly:

SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM my_table WHERE Field = 'my_field'
SHOW COLLATION WHERE Collation = 'collation_you_got'