How Can I Fix Broken UTF-8 Encoding in My MySQL Database?

Fixing Broken UTF-8 Encoding: A Practical Solution

Background:

Users often encounter issues with broken UTF-8 encoding, characterized by characters like î instead of accented characters. This problem arises from inconsistencies in database collation, PHP settings, and storage methods.

Mapping Broken Characters to Correct UTF-8:

To resolve this issue, one effective approach involves a MySQL database dump and re-import process. This method allows for the conversion of broken characters to their correct UTF-8 representations.

Step-by-Step Fix:

1. Dump the MySQL database using the following command:

mysqldump -h DB_HOST -u DB_USER -p DB_PASSWORD --opt --quote-names \
--skip-set-charset --default-character-set=latin1 DB_NAME > DB_NAME-dump.sql

2. Import the dumped data back into a new database with the correct UTF-8 settings:

mysql -h DB_HOST -u DB_USER -p DB_PASSWORD \
--default-character-set=utf8 DB_NAME < DB_NAME-dump.sql

Source:

This solution is based on the technique described in:
http://blog.hno3.org/2010/04/22/fixing-double-encoded-utf-8-data-in-mysql/

Additional Notes:

• Ensure that the database collation is set to utf8_general_ci.
• Verify that PHP is using a proper UTF-8 header.
• Use a text editor that supports UTF-8 without BOM.
• While not all accented character instances may be broken, this method should address most cases.

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