Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

Question

Error message on MySql:

Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation \'=\'

I have gone

Answer 1

In my own case I have the following error

Illegal mix of collations (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

$this->db->select("users.username as matric_no, CONCAT(users.surname, ' ', users.first_name, ' ', users.last_name) as fullname") ->join('users', 'users.username=classroom_students.matric_no', 'left') ->where('classroom_students.session_id', $session) ->where('classroom_students.level_id', $level) ->where('classroom_students.dept_id', $dept);

After weeks of google searching I noticed that the two fields I am comparing consists of different collation name. The first one i.e username is of utf8_general_ci while the second one is of utf8_unicode_ci so I went back to the structure of the second table and changed the second field (matric_no) to utf8_general_ci and it worked like a charm.