How Can I Correctly Handle Cyrillic Characters in MySQL and PHP?

MySQL and PHP: Encoding Cyrillic Characters Correctly

When inserting Cyrillic characters into a MySQL table, encoding issues can arise, leading to incorrect representation in the database. To address this, it's essential to maintain UTF-8 encoding throughout the PHP and MySQL components of your application.

In the PHP script provided, the mix of mysql_ and mysqli_ functions is improper, as the former is deprecated and should be replaced with mysqli_* functions. Additionally, the charset of the connection-object must be explicitly set to UTF-8 using mysqli_set_charset() or $conn->set_charset().

Beyond this, ensuring UTF-8 encoding at all levels is crucial:

• PHP File: Save the PHP script as UTF-8 without BOM.
• HTML Header: Include a meta tag with charset="UTF-8" within tags.
• PHP Header: Set the header to UTF-8 using header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); at the top of the script.
• Database and Tables: Create the database and tables with utf8 character set and a suitable collation like utf8_unicode_ci.
• JSON: When using json_encode(), apply the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE flag to prevent conversion of special characters to their hex equivalents.
• Multibyte Characters: Use functions like mb_strtolower() for handling multibyte characters.

Note that MySQL distinguishes between "charset" and "collation," both of which should be set to utf8. For emojis, MySQL requires utf8mb4 charset. By following these guidelines, you can ensure proper storage and representation of Cyrillic characters in your MySQL database.

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