How to make PDO run SET NAMES utf8 each time I connect, In ZendFramework

Question

How to make PDO adapter run SET NAMES utf8 each time I connect, In ZendFramework. I am using an INI file to save the adapter config data. what entries should I add there?

Answer 1

The connection in zend_db is lazy which means it connects on the first query. if you have a static page with no query's in it it will never even connect - even if it is initialized in you bootstrap file.

so running:

$db->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

Is not so smart. Big thanks to dcaunt for his solution.