fourreux

Hello First of all, thanks for the great book! I'm trying to apply utf8 in my database following the example on page 431-433. Mainly I'll use german characters as ä,ö,ü,ß,€ to insert and select into/from the databse. What I did so far: - I connect and then do "CHARSET utf8". - I created a DB with a collation of latin1_german1_ci. - I then created a table with a column encoded (CHARSET) to utf8. When I query that table via php in a browser I need to do a mysqli_query($dbc, "SET NAMES 'utf8'"); before the actual query otherwise the special characters are not printed correctly. So my question simply is, whether that is a correct way to do it? // Database access information as constants: if (!defined ('DB_USER')) DEFINE ('DB_USER', 'XXX'); if (!defined ('DB_PASSWORD')) DEFINE ('DB_PASSWORD', 'XXX'); if (!defined ('DB_HOST')) DEFINE ('DB_HOST', 'XXX'); if (!defined ('DB_NAME')) DEFINE ('DB_NAME', 'XXX'); // Make the connection: $dbc = @mysqli_connect (DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME) OR die ('Could not connect to MySQL: ' . mysqli_connect_error() ); // Make utf8 related stuff: mysqli_query($dbc, "CHARSET utf8"); mysqli_query($dbc, "SET NAMES 'utf8'"); // Make the query: $q = "SELECT * FROM test_utf8 ORDER BY word"; $r = mysqli_query($dbc, $q); while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($r)) { echo $row['word'] . "<br />"; } It appears to me that I actually need the query "CHARSET utf8" in order to INSERT data, and the "SET NAMES 'utf8'" in order to SELECT data. --------------------------------------------- Second and more general question to this topic: Do you consider it a better way to switch a DB entirely to utf8 (if I need/want it in some columns), or to chose a collation like latin1_german1_ci in general and utf8 on specific columns? I myself would say: use utf8 wherever possible because it is the future, isn't it?? -------------------------------------------- EDIT: Simply writing this post helped me understand better ... (as so very often) So I'm giving some answers by myself: CHARSET vs. SET NAMES: It's actually said by Larry on that same page 431: CHARSET sets the encoding for the communication within the client and SET NAME between mysql & php. So I'll need the following line of code directly after connecting to the db: mysqli_query($dbc, "SET NAMES 'utf8'"); OR mysqli_set_charset($dbc, 'utf8'); remains my second more general question ... and PS: Why do you (Larry) use a column "pass CHAR(40) NOT NULL" in the users table which is utf8 encoded (page 446 in chapter 15: Message Board)? Didn't you mention that using CHAR() wasn't a good idea in utf8 encoded columns?