# RoR + MySQL + Unicode **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 24, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605 "2006-07-24T13:50:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/1 "2006-07-24T13:50:50Z")
hello! I have a problem when I want to display data in Unicode from database. I read [this tutorial](http://ruphus.com/blog/2005/06/23/getting-unicode-mysql-and-rails-to-cooperate/) but I still have problem with non-English characters. I don’t have any other idea what I should do. Did you meet with similat problem? Have you got any idea? Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/2 "2006-07-24T15:56:57Z")
Hi, Agnieszka, have you made sure that you’ve got and encoding: utf8 directive in your database.yaml config file? Cheers, Jan ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 3:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/3 "2006-07-25T15:15:34Z")
hello! Yes, I’m sure. My database.yml file looks like: development: adapter: mysql database: \*\*\* encoding: utf8 username: \*\*\* password: \*\*\* host: \*\*\* port: \*\*\* etc… but is it possible that problem lies in fact that my database in on Unix environment but I work on Windows. May this connection cause a special probelem? I look for special coding, parameters in Ruby source but I find nothing. ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/4 "2006-07-25T22:08:43Z")
Hi, just another guess: Have you installed the mysql gem on your windows box? gem install mysql Cheers, Jan ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 10:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/5 "2006-07-25T22:09:09Z")
Are you testing the application in webrick? If it’s load webrick with the option -c utf-8 (ruby script/server -c utf-8) Another thing that you can try is in your templates put the next: .... .... it’s redundant(theoretically), but in some cases it’s ok. ## Regards View this message in context: [http://www.nabble.com/RoR-%2B-MySQL-%2B-Unicode-tf1991783.html#a5487770](http://www.nabble.com/RoR-%2B-MySQL-%2B-Unicode-tf1991783.html#a5487770) Sent from the RubyOnRails Users forum at [Nabble.com](http://Nabble.com). ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 9:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/6 "2006-07-26T09:23:32Z")
Thanks for advice! … but my application doesn’t display non-English characters. I installed mysql gem and try charset iso-8859-1. Nothing … I use text\_field\_with\_auto\_complete and there I display data from database. May it cause problem? And when application display data from database method find(:all) is executed? I decoded data in database as utf-8 and I read data in utf-8 coding. Are used special codings from reading from database to display in application? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/7 "2006-07-26T20:25:41Z")
I had similar problems, and after trying everything… I noticed that the problem was my database client… I mean, I used the windows “console” to execute the mysql client for loading the data and special characters displayed a ‘?’ on my browser, but when I used a rake task to load data, special characters were displayed correctly. I don’t know why… but I worked for me… I hope it helps you… ---
**Author:** ![piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/848f3c/32.png) [@piekarka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/piekarka)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-mysql-unicode/99605/8 "2006-07-26T20:34:57Z")
Try using an encoding of chaset uft-8, that may work. As long as your database is set to work with utf-8 and you also have this set in your database yml file this should (theoretically) work. - Sarah