Skip to main content

Storing unicode texts in MySQL with phpMyAdmin

Today, I've received a personal mail/request from Sivanantham Hemamalini, working for IT leisure in Singapore. Since I was in company when received the mail, I couldn't answer immediately. If I understand the question right, it is about inputting Unicode texts especially Tamil in phpMyAdmin.

PhpMyAdmin's default characterset is iso-8859-1 and so if we enter anything in the form, browser will convert it into numerical html entities. Say for example, if we enter தமிழ் and submit the form, it will convert it to & #2980;& #2990;& #3007;& #2996;& #3021;. Because of this browser's behavior, it will be difficult to store the Unicode text as it is.

Solutions

Immediate solution I could think of is changing or forcing the browser's character encoding into utf-8. In Mozilla Firefox, it can be set via View -> Character Encoding -> Unicode (UTF-8)

Another elegant solution might be changing the phpMyAdmin configurations so that it sends and sets proper charset in Content-Type header as Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
To do this, we have to edit the config.inc.php file found at phpMyAdmin's root directory:
$cfg['DefaultCharset'] = 'utf-8'; and
$cfg['AllowAnywhereRecoding'] = true;
These change of configurations should send proper headers. Anyhow, if the lang cookie is already set to some other charset, it won't reflect the changes. So, one may need to clear the cookies to see the changes.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I edit the config.inc.php file to this,
$cfg['DefaultCharset'] = 'utf-8'; and
$cfg['AllowAnywhereRecoding'] = true;
But i am getting error stating "Can not load iconv
or
recode extension needed for charset conversion,
configure php to allow using these extensions or
disable charset conversion in phpMyAdmin."
what is the solution for this.
I am using windows XP and php,v 2.8.2.1
thanks in advance
Hema
Dec 17, 2004, 2:33:00 PM
R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah said…
Hema, as the error message says it couldn't load the iconv extension, as it is not enabled. You can enable and disable PHP extensions via php.ini configuration file.

Use phpinfo() function to find the path of php.ini file.
To enable the iconv extension, just uncomment the line ;extension=php_iconv.dll (that is just remove the leading semicolon ";") in php.ini
You may need to restart Apache for the changes to reflect. Again use phpinfo() to see if the module is enabled or not. Now, you're done.

This procedure applies to any PHP extensions on Windows.
Dec 17, 2004, 11:24:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Do you have to use phpMyAdmin? I would write a simple PHP script to accept the input correclty and post to the db. The other solutions sound like more work.
Jan 31, 2005, 11:30:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interview question #1

Since I have been asked to interview experienced PHP programmers, I was preparing few interview questions. I came to know, most of the people ask questions found in the Internet; most of them are like "What is the function used to connect MySQL DB in PHP". Personally, I don't like these types of questions; I'd thought the person must apply ideas what he was taught in colleges--finally I came out with one question: A product vendor has Quantity Vs. Price data like 1 -> Rs. 50 2 -> Rs. 95 3 -> Rs. 140 .... like upto 1 million data. He wants a system, which gives the price when the quantity is provided. For example, if you provide the quantity value as 2, then it should provide Rs. 95. How this system can be designed? As expected, all the people said about using database tables and quering on quantity. I have asked them to find out a system which doesn't use databases--provided the accuracy of the system may not be 100%--it may give at least 90% ac...
7 comments
Read more

Open source resume templates with JSON-LD (SEO-friendly) support

I don't usually keep track of the projects that I worked on. I have been recently advised to keep resume updated with the projects list. And so I have searched for resume templates and tools. Indian resume Vs International resume During the process, I have found that there are vast differences between the format of Indian resumes and International resumes. Indian resumes are extremely verbose with number of projects, team size, client name, etc. whereas international format is more succinct and short. So I was kind of lost in the process in adopting the template. LinkedIn to the rescue? No. Unfortunately, LinkedIn format is "common" and is not easy to update. Moreover, these days LinkedIn has become signupware [sic] and so accessing resume is a nightmare. Enter JSON Resume JSON Resume is an awesome open source approach for creating resume. I accidentally came across while searching for JSON-LD format for resume. Couple of great features: Resume hosting (op...
Post a Comment
Read more

Valen Smith, the English teacher videos are missing!

I vaguely remembered that sometimes around 2009, engVid on YouTube was very popular. I especially liked a teacher by name Valen Smith's videos. She was not only beautiful but also very good at explaining the English usage. I also vaguely remembered to check her channel ValenESL around 2015. But, not sure what happened to her or engVid, all her videos are sadly gone. I have also noted that many people on Twitter were asking the same. Not sure what happened. Some people seem to have reuploaded her videos and YouTube continuously removing them with a note "This video contains content from LearnVid, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." Strangely though, on Facebook, some people have managed to create a fake account using her old channel name ValenESL.
Post a Comment
Read more