Resolving incorrect character encoding when displaying MySQL database results after upgrade to PHP 5.3

Question

Issue Description

After upgrading PHP on our development server from 5.2 to 5.3, we\'re encountering an issue where data requested from our database and displayed

Answer 1

I see you've tried this, but the syntax I use is: mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8"). Your syntax may be correct, I've just never seen it like that before.

Example:

// connect to database stuff
$Connection = mysql_connect($server, $username, $password)
or die ("Error connecting to server");

// connect to database stuff
$db = mysql_select_db($database, $Connection)
or die ("Error selecting database");

mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8");

Answer 2

I had similar issue after upgrading PHP from 5.2.3 to 5.3.5 (5.3.5-Win32-VC6-x86), MySQL 5.0.41 (not updated). I think that reason is a little difference between PHP versions.

PHP 5.2.3 default (without SET NAMES):
character_set_client = latin1
character_set_connection = latin1
character_set_database = utf8
character_set_filesystem = binary
character_set_results = latin1
character_set_server = latin2
character_set_system = utf8
collation_connection = latin1_swedish_ci
collation_database = utf8_polish_ci
collation_server = latin2_general_ci

PHP 5.3.5 default (without SET NAMES):
character_set_client = latin2
character_set_connection = latin2
character_set_database = utf8
character_set_filesystem = binary
character_set_results = latin2
character_set_server = latin2
character_set_system = utf8
collation_connection = latin2_general_ci
collation_database = utf8_polish_ci
collation_server = latin2_general_ci

I added data to database in PHP 5.2.3 default (without SET NAMES), so now to display it correctly I must read it using:

$pdo -> query("SET NAMES 'latin1'");

Maybe something similar is reason of your problem.

Answer 3

If you have made sure that both the tables, and the output encoding are UTF-8, almost the only thing left is the connection encoding.

The reason for the change in behaviour when updating servers could be a change of the default connection encoding:

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

However, I can't see any changes in the default encoding between versions, so if those were brand-new installs, I can't see that happening.

Anyway, what happens if you run this from within your PHP query and output the results. Any differences to the command line output?

 SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%';
 SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';