Inserting UTF-8 encoded string into UTF-8 encoded mysql table fails with “Incorrect string value”

Question

Inserting UTF-8 encoded string into UTF-8 encoded table gives incorrect string value.

PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect str

Answer 1

to solve this issue, first you change your database field to utf8m4b charset. For example:

ALTER TABLE `tb_name` CHANGE `field_name` `field_name` VARCHAR(100) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci NULL DEFAULT NULL; 

then in your db connection, set driver_options for it to utf8mb4. For example, if you use PDO

$db = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb;charset=utf8mb4', 'username', 'password');

or in zend framework 1.2

$dbParam = array('host' => 'localhost', 'username' => 'db_user_name',
            'password' => 'password', 'dbname' => 'db_name',
            'driver_options' => array(
                '1002' => "SET NAMES 'utf8mb4'",
                '12'    => 0 //this is not necessary
            )
        );

Answer 2

I fixed the error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value ...... with this method:

I use utf8mb4_unicode_ci for database Set utf8mb4_unicode_ci for all tables

Set longblog datatype for column (not text, longtext.... you need big datatype to store 4 bytes of your content)

It is okay now. If you use laravel, continue to edit config/database.php

'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',

If you use function strtolower, replace it with mb_strtolower Notice: you have to put <meta charset="utf-8"> on your head tag

Answer 3

Answer 4

In your PDO connecton, set the charset.

new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=the_db;charset=utf8mb4', $user, $password);