Unicode: LC 7.0 - PHP - MySQL?

[Martin Baxter]

A little additional info from me.

If your database will only ever contain ascii characters, then
ascii_general, utf-8 and latin1_swedish will all work fine because the
ascii characters are the same in all of them.

I would expect problems though if mixing these up and subsequently
attempting to introduce non-ascii characters to the data.

latin1_swedish was the default in MYSQL, since it was originally
developed by Swedes.

You should set the desired collation for the database when you create
it, but it is also possible to change it later.

In my experience it is important to get the character set defined
consistently throughout the workflow.

This involves:

1) The collation of the database (and individual columns) Normally set
when database created.
2) The database connection should specify the character set to be
transmitted (done in php when making the connection)
3) Character manipulations in php may need to specify the character set
4) LC scripts of course need to take character set into account.
5) Any html involved should specify and be written using the same
character set, especially if forms are acquiring user input to be stored
in the database.

For web-based work, utf-8 is very popular and utf8_general_ci is often
nowadays the default collation in web database front ends.

HTH

Martin Baxter

On 29/10/14 16:11, Tiemo Hollmann TB wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a LC 6 program communicating through PHP with a MySQL db. Because my
> background about Unicode, PHP and MySQL is limited I wonder what I have to
> care about, when migrating to LC 7.
> 
> I have read the release notes of LC 7. My limited thinking was, that UniCode
> really has a unique code for each sign on the planet. But why is there a
> UTF-8 / UTF-16. Which one is LC using? Which one is my MySQL db using? I
> don't find any information about UTF-8/16 in my db description. How is the
> collation of the db related to UTF-x and to LC?. My tables are collated in
> ascii_general_ci. In some of my PHPs a "COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci" is used.
> I have no idea why this Swedish collation is in my german PHP and how it can
> be compatible with my ascii_general_ci DB. (The PHPs are made by third
> party)
> 
> What do I have to change in my LC program when migrating to 7. Where to
> start? 
> 
> Is LCs Unicode really the magic thing, where I don't have to care about any
> charset related thing and all my thinking is just waste? Or do I have to
> migrate, test and dig into one crash after the other? Or do you have any
> helpful hints, how to start such a migration and what to look for?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Tiemo
>