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

To see default collation of the database:

USE db_name;
SELECT @@character_set_database, @@collation_database;

To see collation of the table:

SHOW TABLE STATUS where name like 'table_name';

To see collation of the columns:

SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM table_name;

To see the default character set of a table

SHOW CREATE TABLE table_name;

Answer 2

For columns:

SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM table_name;

Answer 3

show global variables where variable_name like 'character_set_%' or variable_name like 'collation%'

Answer 4

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'

Answer 5

For database : USE db_name; SELECT @@character_set_database;

Answer 6

For databases:

SELECT SCHEMA_NAME 'database', default_character_set_name 'charset', DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME 'collation' FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA;

Example output:

mysql> SELECT SCHEMA_NAME 'database', default_character_set_name 'charset', DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME 'collation' FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA;
+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+
| database                   | charset | collation          |
+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+
| information_schema         | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| drupal_demo1               | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| drupal_demo2               | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| drupal_demo3               | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| drupal_demo4               | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| drupal_demo5               | latin1  | latin1_swedish_ci  |

...

+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+
55 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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