Cannot properly insert greek characters in mysql database

Question

Our mysql database shows Î Î¿Î»Ï Î³Î»Ï…ÎºÏŒÏ in place of greek characters while sending data from an emulator to a mysql database. Other characters are left ok.

Answer 1

An excellent introduction about using UTF8 with PHP and Mysql can be found in this blog. The main points are:

1. Set the database tables to UTF8
2. In your php.ini set default_charset = "utf-8";
3. After the connection is established you may have to run the following command/query: set names UTF-8;

I guess you are missing point 3.

In your PHP script, you should do something like this (untested):

$handler = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=database', 
  'username', 
  'password',
  array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 
    'SET NAMES utf8;SET CHARACTER SET UTF8;'));