Character issues when inserting into MySQL DB

Question

Having an issue with strange characters showing up when inserting into a database, have tried tirelessly to figure out the issue but I am out of ideas...

Basically if I insert this data like so (this is just testing):

  $valy = "…industry's favorite </em><strong><em>party of the year</em></strong><em>, </em><a href='http://www.unitingagainstlungcancer.org/getinvolved/strolling-supper-with-blues-news'><span class='s1'><em>Joan's…";
  $valy = mysql_real_escape_string($valy);

  $query = "INSERT INTO test_table (data) VALUES ('".$valy."')";
  mysql_query($query,$dbhandle);

this will end up in the database (notice the A characters):

"...industry's favoriteÂ party of the year,Â http://www.unitingagainstlungcancer.org/getinvolved/strolling-supper-with-blues-news'>Joan's..."

I have tried to line up all the character settings:

php default_charset = utf-8
mysql table & row charset = utf-8
Mysql instance variables:
character set client    utf8
(Global value)  latin1  
character set connection    utf8    
(Global value)  latin1  
character set database  latin1  
character set filesystem    binary  
character set results   utf8    
(Global value)  latin1  
character set server    latin1  
character set system    utf8

What could this issue be?

stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through — user557846
– user557846, Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 19:04

Aris · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-12 19:03:59Z

2

One thing you may be missing is when you setup the connection. There you should also set the encoding to utf8.

Example:

$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'user', 'password');
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$link);

However, don't use the mysql extension, it's deprecated: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-set-charset.php

answered Nov 12, 2013 at 19:03

Aris

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Comments

donnikitos · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-12 19:05:01Z

1

Try to set the mysql connection to UTF-8 as well:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

answered Nov 12, 2013 at 19:05

donnikitos

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2 Comments

Jonast92 Over a year ago

You don't want to do it every single time.

donnikitos Over a year ago

You can set it right after you connected to the database, than you don't have to do it every single time.

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