A script to change all tables and fields to the utf-8-bin collation in MYSQL

Question

Is there a SQL or PHP script that I can run that will change the default collation in all tables and fields in a database?

I can write one

Answer 1

Be careful! If you actually have utf stored as another encoding, you could have a real mess on your hands. Back up first. Then try some of the standard methods:

for instance http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/898 http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/05/mysql_database_migration_latin.html

I've had to resort to converting all text fields to binary, then back to varchar/text. This has saved my ass.

I had data is UTF8, stored as latin1. What I did:

Drop indexes. Convert fields to binary. Convert to utf8-general ci

If your on LAMP, don’t forget to add set NAMES command before interacting with the db, and make sure you set character encoding headers.