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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T21:15:19+00:00

I have a MySQL DB table where I store addresses, including Norwegain addresses. CREATE

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I have a MySQL DB table where I store addresses, including Norwegain addresses.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `addresses` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `street1` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8_danish_ci NOT NULL,
  `street2` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8_danish_ci DEFAULT 'NULL',
  `zipcode` varchar(10) COLLATE NOT NULL,
  `city` varchar(30) COLLATE utf8_danish_ci NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `index_store` (`name`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_danish_ci;

Now, this table was fine untill I screwed up and accidentaly set all cities = ‘test’. Luckilly I had another table called helper_zipcode. This table contains alle zipcodes and cities for Norway.

So I updated addresses table with data from helper_zipcode.

Unfortunately in the front end, cities like Bodø now shows like Bod�.
All æ ø åare now shown as � � � (but they look fine in the DB).

I’m using HTML 5, so my header looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
  <head> 
    <meta charset = "utf-8" />
  (...)

This is not the first time I struggle with unicode.

What is the seceret for storing unicode characters (from Europe) in DB and display the same way when retrieved from DB?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    from mysql docs:

    Posted by lorenz pressler on May 2
    2006 12:46pm [Delete] [Edit]

    if you
    get data via php from your mysql-db
    (everything utf-8) but still get ‘?’
    for some special characters in your
    browser (<meta
    http-equiv="Content-Type"
    content="text/html; charset=utf-8"
    />    ), try this:

    after mysql_connect() , and
    mysql_select_db() add this lines:
    mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8");

    worked for me. i tried first with the
    utf8_encode, but this only worked for
    äüöéè… and so on, but not for
    kyrillic and other chars.

    Is your problem storing the data in mysql or from retrieving the stored data using php?

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