PDO + MySQL and broken UTF-8 encoding

Question

I use the PDO library with a MySQL database in PHP, but if I insert any data encoded in UTF-8, like Arabic words, it’s inserted into the database, but as ?????????

Answer 1

You have to set the correct character set for the connection. Add the charset=utf8 option to the DSN (this is MySQL-specific!)

$pdo = new PDO(
    'mysql:host=hostname;dbname=defaultDbName;charset=utf8',
    'username',
    'password'
);

However, in PHP versions before 5.3.6, you must use a workaround as the charset option is not supported.

$pdo = new PDO(
    'mysql:host=hostname;dbname=defaultDbName',
    'username',
    'password',
    array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8")
);