php mysql SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci' doesn't work with mysqli

Question

I am migrating my site into php mysqli from php mysql_* methods.

I had following code that did the job:

mysql_query(\"SET NAMES \'utf8\' COLLA

Answer 1

It is not recommended to use mysqli query in order to set names but rather mysqli::set_charset

$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "", "test");
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");