MySQL treats ÅÄÖ as AAO?

Question

These two querys gives me the exact same result:

select * from topics where name=\'Harligt\';
select * from topics where name=\'Härligt\';

Answer 1

Since you are in Sweden I'd recommend using the Swedish collation. Here's an example showing the difference it makes:

CREATE TABLE topics (name varchar(100) not null) CHARACTER SET utf8;

INSERT topics (name) VALUES ('Härligt');

select * from topics where name='Harligt';
'Härligt'

select * from topics where name='Härligt';
'Härligt'    

ALTER TABLE topics MODIFY name VARCHAR(100) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_swedish_ci;

select * from topics where name='Harligt';


select * from topics where name='Härligt';
'Härligt'

Note that in this example I only changed the one column to Swedish collation, but you should probably do it for your entire database, all tables, all varchar columns.