MySQL - How to store AES_Encrypted data?

Question

So I have been browsing the internet, and came across the MySQL built-in function AES_ENCRYPT. It doesn\'t seem too hard to use, but some sources tell me to store the encryp

Answer 1

Many encryption and compression functions return strings for which the result might contain arbitrary byte values. If you want to store these results, use a column with a VARBINARY or BLOB binary string data type. This will avoid potential problems with trailing space removal or character set conversion that would change data values, such as may occur if you use a nonbinary string data type (CHAR, VARCHAR, TEXT).

Source: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/encryption-functions.html