Building Chinese Web Sites using PHP - Version 2.14, by Dr. Herong Yang

Building Chinese Web Sites using PHP

∟MySQL - Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL

∟Summary - Sending and Fetching Non-ASCII Text

Looking back on tests I did in this chapter and the previous chapter, here are some simple rules you need to follow when sending and fetch non-ASCII text to and from MySQL server:

• Non-ASCII text data can be included in SQL statement. But you need to tell MySQL server what is the encoding used for non-ASCII text in the SQL statement by setting session variable character_set_client. For example, "SET character_set_client=UTF8".
• To preventing MySQL server performing any encoding conversion before executing the SQL statement, set session variable character_set_connection to match character_set_client. For example, "SET character_set_connection=utf8".
• When fetching non-ASCII text data back from MySQL server, set session variable character_set_connection to match the encoding used by the table column to the text data. This prevents MySQL server from doing any encoding conversion beforing returning the fetched result. For example, "SET character_set_results=utf8".
• If you want the fetched text data to be in an encoding different than the encoding of the original data column, you can tell MySQL to perform an encoding conversion for you by setting character_set_results to the encoding you wanted. For example, text data stored in a Big5 text column, and you want to fetch it as UTF8, run "SET character_set_results=utf8".

Applying those rules to a Chinese web site, my suggestions would be:

• Define all text columns as UTF-8.
• Run "SET character_set_client=utf8" and "SET character_set_connection=utf8".
• Include all text data in UTF-8 encoding in SQL statements.
• Run "SET character_set_result=utf8".
• Fetch all text data in UTF-8 encoding.

By the way, MySQL offers a special SET command:

SET NAMES <encoding_name>

This is command is equivalent to 3 sET commands:

SET character_set_client = <encoding_name>
SET character_set_results = <encoding_name>
SET character_set_connection = <encoding_name>

Last update: 2015.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 PHP Installation on Windows Systems

 Integrating PHP with Apache Web Server

 charset="*" - Encodings on Chinese Web Pages

 Chinese Characters in PHP String Literals

 Multibyte String Functions in UTF-8 Encoding

 Input Text Data from Web Forms

 Input Chinese Text Data from Web Forms

 MySQL - Installation on Windows

 MySQL - Connecting PHP to Database

 MySQL - Character Set and Encoding

►MySQL - Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL

 Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL in Latin1 Encoding

 Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL in UTF8 Encoding

 Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL in GBK Encoding

 Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL in Big5 Encoding

 Sending Non-ASCII Text to MySQL in Multiple Encoding

►Summary - Sending and Fetching Non-ASCII Text

 Retrieving Chinese Text from Database to Web Pages

 Input Chinese Text Data to MySQL Database

 References

 PDF Printing Version

Summary - Sending and Fetching Non-ASCII Text - Updated in 2018, by Dr. Herong Yang