Flint.za: Displaying UTF8 from MySQL with PHP

Monday, May 24, 2010

Displaying UTF8 from MySQL with PHP

I had some issues displaying localized text in a PHP based internal tool recently, it turns out the solution was really simple-the MySql connection just needs to know that the connection must be UTF8. Probably no-brainer stuff for all you PHP-Ninjas.. news to me :)

To do this with a PDO connection, just add an init command when you create the PDO command:

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$this->pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=".$this->host."; dbname=".$this->databaseName,
                    $this->user, $this->password,
                    array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8"));

Thanks to Rob Allen for the tip, variation for other connection methods can be found on his blog.

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