Question

I use the following code to store and update data in my db.

<?php
header("Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8", true);
mysql_connect("localhost", "test", "test") or die(mysql_error());
    mysql_select_db("test") or die(mysql_error());

    // mysql_set_charset('UTF8');
    mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
    mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8");
    mysql_query("SET COLLATION_CONNECTION = 'utf8_unicode_ci'");




    mysql_query("UPDATE `test`.`english` SET age = '".$age."', city = '".mysql_real_escape_string($_REQUEST['city'])."', aboutMe = '".$_REQUEST['about']."' WHERE `english`.`username` = '".$_REQUEST['username']."' LIMIT 1 ;") 
    or die(mysql_error());  

The code is working well. But if the string, e.g. “city” contains a ä,ö,ü it is stored as ?
So for example the word “Bär” goes to “B?r”.

I have already added these utf8 things but it does not help.
The server is only supporting php4.x

Edit: The DB is using latin1_general_ci as collation.

Answer 1

Use utf8 as collation, maybe utf8_bin or utf8_unicode_ci

(The ci means it’s case insensitive so comparsions like “John” = “JOHN” return true). You can do this by running the following query in MySQL:

alter table `test`.`english` convert to character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci;