Question

I have set every encoding set variable I can figure out to utf8.

In database.yml:

development: &development
  adapter: mysql2
  encoding: utf8

In my.cnf:

[client]
default-character-set = utf8

[mysqld]
default-character-set = utf8
skip-character-set-client-handshake
character-set-server = utf8
collation-server = utf8_general_ci
init-connect = SET NAMES utf8

And if I run mysql client in terminal:

mysql> show variables like 'character%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | utf8                       |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | utf8                       |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+

mysql> show variables like 'collation%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name        | Value           |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_general_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+

But it’s to beat the air. When I insert utf8 data from Rails app, it finally becomes ????????????.

What do I miss?

Answer 1

Check not global settings but when you are connected to specific database for application. When you changed settings for mysql you have also change settings for your app database.

Simple way to check it is to log to mysql into app db:

mysql app_db_production -u db_user -p   

or rails command:

rails dbconsole production

For my app it looks like this:

mysql> show variables like 'character%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | utf8                       |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> show variables like 'collation%';
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value             |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci   |
| collation_database   | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8_general_ci   |
+----------------------+-------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Command for changing database collation and charset:

mysql> alter database app_db_production  CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci ;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

And remeber to change charset and collation for all your tables:

ALTER TABLE tablename CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci; # changes for new records
ALTER TABLE tablename CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci; # migrates old records 

Now it should work.