# Issues with MySql database encoding

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 9, 2009, 6:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862 "2009-06-09T18:44:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindtonic)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 6:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862/1 "2009-06-09T18:44:53Z")

</div>

Hello, I am working on an international project that requires UTF-8  
encoding for letter characters. I have successfully changed my local  
development machine to UTF-8 and all characters are holding as they  
should. However, my production server is a Solaris box, and it is not  
holding the proper characters even after I change the database  
encoding.

I would prefer not to use htmlentites as it can be quite messy and  
does not yield an accurate search result.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindtonic)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 6:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862/2 "2009-06-09T18:49:34Z")

</div>

database.yml is set properly (has been from the beginning):

production:  
adapter: mysql  
encoding: utf8

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindtonic)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862/3 "2009-06-09T18:57:47Z")

</div>

On Jun 9, 5:48 pm, Mindtonic [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> database.yml is set properly (has been from the beginning):
> 
> production:  
> adapter: mysql  
> encoding: utf8

Are the encodings for the various columns set properly?

Fred

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@mindtonic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindtonic)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/issues-with-mysql-database-encoding/169862/4 "2009-06-09T20:08:57Z")

</div>

How was the database created? Through MySQL SQL import? Does the sql  
have UTF-8?