Re^2: I'm having a lot of trouble getting UTF-8 output via Perl/DBI on OS X

[Cody Fendant]

$dbh->do("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

That works! Thank you!

So, what's going on? It's actually MySQL auto-converting from UTF-8 when I never asked it to?

[roboticus]

Cody Fendant:

I just looked at the DBD::mysql documentation, and there's a setting mysql_enable_utf8 that defaults to off. I've not used DBD::mysql, but based on the docs, it looks like you can just add the setting in the connect statement like this:

$dbh= DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:test;mysql_enable_utf8=1", "root", "");

++ for the OP: clear, detailed and didn't seem to miss any pertinent information.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[remiah]

Hello, Cody Fendant,roboticus.

PostgreSQL or MySQL seems to have encoding for server storage, and for client encoding. So, I guess 'select hex(field) from table' shows bytes for server storage and when you receive the value at the client, it is converted to encoding of client.

"mysql_enable_utf8=1" and "SET NAMES 'utf8'" sets encoding for client. I saw both of them gives me good result with DBD::mysql version "4.008".

In fact, I am not the man of MySQL... Please point me if I say wrong.

P.S: With my DBD::mysql version, the result is utf-8 bytes, not Perl's character. utf8::is_utf8 will tell you whether it is decoded character or bytes.