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

For databases:

USE your_database_name;
show variables like "character_set_database";
-- or:
-- show variables like "collation_database";

Cf. this page. And check out the MySQL manual

Answer 2

For all the databases you have on the server:

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

Output:

+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+
| database                   | charset | collation          |
+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+
| information_schema         | utf8    | utf8_general_ci    |
| my_database                | latin1  | latin1_swedish_ci  |
...
+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+

---

For a single Database:

mysql> USE my_database;
mysql> show variables like "character_set_database";

Output:

    +----------------------------+---------+
    | Variable_name              |  Value  |
    +----------------------------+---------+
    | character_set_database     |  latin1 | 
    +----------------------------+---------+

---

Getting the collation for Tables:

mysql> USE my_database;
mysql> SHOW TABLE STATUS WHERE NAME LIKE 'my_tablename';

OR - will output the complete SQL for create table:

mysql> show create table my_tablename

---

Getting the collation of columns:

mysql> SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM my_tablename;

output:

+---------+--------------+--------------------+ ....
| field   | type         | collation          |
+---------+--------------+--------------------+ ....
| id      | int(10)      | (NULL)             |
| key     | varchar(255) | latin1_swedish_ci  |
| value   | varchar(255) | latin1_swedish_ci  |
+---------+--------------+--------------------+ ....

Answer 3

I always just look at SHOW CREATE TABLE mydatabase.mytable.

For the database, it appears you need to look at SELECT DEFAULT_CHARACTER_SET_NAME FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA.