Talk about MySQL character set and its setting method

MySQL is a popular open source relational database management system with a wide range of application scenarios, such as web applications, data analysis, data storage, etc. When using MySQL, we need to set the character set scheme to ensure that the data stored and displayed by the database is correct. This article will introduce the MySQL character set and how to set it.

1. Introduction to MySQL character set

MySQL is a Unicode-oriented system and supports all Unicode character sets. Therefore, the character set used in MySQL includes the Unicode character set and some other character sets. MySQL character sets can be divided into server-level character sets and database-level and table-level character sets.

1. Server-level character set: MySQL server has a default character set, which is the server-level character set. When we create a new database or table, if no character set is specified, the server-level character set will be used. We can view the server-level character set through the following statement:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character\_set\_server';

By default, MySQL’s server-level character set is utf8.

2. Database-level character set: Each MySQL database has a default character set, which is the default character set for the database. When we create a new table, if no character set is specified, the default character set of the database is used. We can check the database default character set through the following statement:

SHOW CREATE DATABASE db_name;

If db_name is the database name we want to check, we can find the character set information.

3. Table-level character set: We can set the table-level character set by specifying the character set when creating the table. The specified character set does not depend on the default character set of the server and database.

2. Character set setting

MySQL character set setting is a simple process that only takes a few steps to complete.

1. Specify the character set when creating a database

We can specify the character set when creating a new database. For example, if we want to use the Unicode character set, we can use the following command to create a database:

CREATE DATABASE mydb CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

where mydb is the database name and utf8mb4 is the character set name.

2. Modify the default character set

We can modify the default character set of the MySQL server by modifying the configuration file my.cnf or using the SET command. We can use the following command to modify the character set:

SET character_set_server=utf8mb4;

3. Modify table-level character set

If we want to modify the character set of the table, we can use the ALTER TABLE statement to complete . For example, if we want to change the character set of the my_table table to utf8mb4, we can use the following command:

ALTER TABLE my_table CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;

where, my_table is the name of the table whose character set needs to be modified.

3. Summary

The setting of MySQL character set is very important to ensure that the data we store and process is accurate. This article introduces the three levels of MySQL character sets and how to set them. In actual use, the appropriate character set should be selected according to needs. If multi-language text storage is involved, it is recommended to use the utf8mb4 character set.

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