Tip: Display unicode data from mySQL DB on a website in PHP.

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Before we start we need to make mySQL database capable of supporting unicode characters. For that we need to change the database collation or the table collation to utf8_unicode_ci. This can be done with phpmyadmin portal.

  1. Click the table you need to change.
  2. select Structure tab.
  3. Check the required column and click change or edit.
  4. From the collation drop down select utf8_unicode_ci.
  5. Press Go.

Now your mySQL database table column is unicode supported. You can insert some unicode values via phpmyadmin itself. Just copy and paste unicode text from some websites like http://www.manoramaonline.com and submit. Ok we got our unicode text inserted into our unicode field in a table.

Next we will see how to display that content on the webpage using php.

Below is the normal command to connect with our mySQL database.

mysql_connect(“host”, “username”, “password”);
mysql_select_db(“$db_name”);

After the above command insert below lines and our mission is accomplished.

header(‘content-type:text/html; charset=utf-8’);
mysql_query(“set names utf8”);

Now the data retrieved and displayed with standard commands will display those unicode characters properly.

Published by Sherbaz

Technology enthusiast Sherbaz is a Microsoft certified SQL Server Subject Matter Expert. He had fun automating day to day task to achieve management goals. He has extensive hands-on experience in high availability deployments and support with several years of industry experience performing SQL Server installations, configuration, maintenance, backups, performance tuning, Transactional & P2P replication, migration, high availability solutions (Always on, Failover Clustering, Logshipping and Mirroring) and Disaster recovery. Sherbaz also has basic hands-on experience in other DBMSs like MongoDB, Oracle 9i, 10g, Sybase and MySQL. 1 year on Mongodb, Oracle 9i & 10g. Completed M102 & M202 courses in MongoDB. Sherbaz spends his spare time with automation in electronics, embedded system circuits and IOT in his private lab at home. Also, he supports his customers and users at www.SplitExpense.in for issues with app, website or telegram chat bot @SplitExpenseBot https://t.me/SplitExpenseBot. @TheSherBot https://t.me/TheSherBot is another telegram chat bot, partially artificial intelligent, programmed and maintained by him on python and backend Mongodb database. Sherbaz always showed interest learning new technologies and to think out of the box bringing innovation in work. Some of his work is documented @ www.sherbaz.com. He is now busy learning 3D modeling software on his roadmap towards building his next hobby build, A 3D PRINTER. Subscribe to his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/SherbazMohamed/

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