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Asked: 2026-05-30T06:07:05+00:00

I have a project where users are supposed to use special characters (cyrillic like

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I have a project where users are supposed to use special characters (cyrillic like ‘Врати се на почетак’ which means return to top for example). I will have to make some special settings and I need some advice regarding the proper encoding to use for my project:

  1. mysql database – is it good to use this encoding utf8_unicode_ci or should I search to a specific one? (I did not find anything dedicated to cyrillic languages, but this review says it is ok to use this http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?103,187048,188748#msg-188748)
  2. php – will this setting mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); be enough in php to parse correctly the mysql query response in my code?
  3. html headers – would this header <META http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251"> suffice for the correct display and interpretation for both browsers and crowlers for my page?

Is there anything else I should be aware of in this issue?

Thank you!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    UTF-8 is the better solution for Cyrillic chars in web. But you have to change this:

    <META http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251">

    to 

    <META http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

    And of course the source files must be saved with urf-8 enc set.

    PS: If you are setting everything in utf8 there is no need of calling mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); Its necessary only if you have inherited project with db in other encoding/converting old databases is sometimes nightmare/

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