Question

• currently on Wamp 2.20
• MySQL version : 5.5.20
• PHP version : 5.3.10
• table collation : utf8-bin
• header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

while i can see the data saved in the MySQL table are the Greek characters, when i try to echo them from PHP, they turn into “?” question marks.

Answer 1

Make sure your client connection is set for UTF8. Examples:

SQL

SET NAMES UTF8;

PHP MySQLi

mysqli_set_charset('utf8');

PHP PDO

$handle = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbname",
  'username', 'password', 
  array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8"
));

PHP mysql (deprecated – do not use)

mysql_set_charset('utf8');