Encoding problem in phpMyAdmin. Specifically with records containing russian text.

Question

I'm making small module/plugin for my future CMS/Framework. I wanted it from begining to be with multi-language support.

• I set my new database to utf8_unicode_ci (I read that it is more accurate, then utf8_general_ci)
• Set my files to UTF-8 without BOM
• Every page has in head Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf8

When I register new user new record is added to user table. I tried to register user with russian nickname. When I inserted it to form it was fine. Added record to table. Signed in and showed greetings fine in russian too. But when I looked at the record in table the nickname was some gibberish characters. I tried all encodings in browser. Nothing helped.

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UPD: I even tried to view data with SQLyog. Shows same as phpMyAdmin.

Small screenshot of what I mean

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Could anyone explain to me, what might be the problem?

Answer 1

Here's an earlier answer of mine about the same problem, try that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3021769/how-to-display-a-mysql-table-data-in-another-language-properly-in-php/3021908#3021908

Answer 2

Every page has in head Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf8

is it meta tag or HTTP header? must be a latter one.

and you have to run SET NAMES utf8 query every time you connect to the database in your PHP scripts