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Possible Duplicate:
Save Data in Arabic in MySQL database

I have a problem with retrieving Arabic data from MYSQL database using PHP, it appears as question marks "????" in HTML:

  1. I have a database with "utf8_general_ci" as collation.
  2. The database contains some data in Arabic Language.
  3. The HTML encoding is "UTF-8".
  4. When I tried to retrieve the data in HTML, it appears as "?????".

Please Help !!!

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    After you connect to the database, execute this query "SET NAMES utf8" before retrieving data. Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 10:35
  • There are everal steps where things can go wrong if any component of the tool chain is configured not to use UTF-8. So in the end you will have to check at all stations where the data travels through to find that place where the encoding is suddenly broken. Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 10:39
  • See "question mark" in stackoverflow.com/questions/38363566/… Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 4:55

1 Answer 1

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you must set charset in first connect with mysql by this query:

SET CHARACTER SET utf8

for example in mysqli functions

$MySQL_Handle = mysqli_connect(HOSTNAME,DATABASE_USERNAME,DATABASE_PASSWORD,DATABASE_NAME) or die ( mysqli_error($MySQL_Handle) ); $sSQL= 'SET CHARACTER SET utf8'; mysqli_query($MySQL_Handle,$sSQL) or die ('Can\'t charset in DataBase');

and PDO sample :

$dbh = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=' . $DB_NAME, $DB_USER, $DB_PASS, array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES 'UTF8'")); $dbh->exec("SET CHARACTER SET UTF8");

this action need before insert and before select.

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1 Comment

Now days it's better to use prepare to harden security and to set the charset use: $conn->set_charset("utf8");

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