# Ultrasphinx and utf8 searching

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultrasphinx-and-utf8-searching/139733>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 6, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultrasphinx-and-utf8-searching/139733 "2008-06-06T15:09:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![phil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@phil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phil)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultrasphinx-and-utf8-searching/139733/1 "2008-06-06T15:09:01Z")

</div>

I am having a serious problem with ultrasphinx and not sure where to  
turn for help!

We have an object that has this in its is\_indexed field (with other  
things):

```
          {:class_name => "Participant", :field =>

```

“name”, :table\_alias =\> “p1”,  
:as =\> “actor”, :association\_sql =\> “LEFT OUTER JOIN  
films\_participants ON (films.`id` = films\_participants.`film_id`) LEFT  
OUTER JOIN participants AS p1 ON (p1.`id` =  
films\_participants.`participant_id`)”},

Now, if I try and search on something with the query “actor:Depp” I  
get back a lot of films with someone named depp associated with them.  
But, if I try and search for “actor:Dúrcal” I get back nothing, though  
I have several people with that name in the database and they are  
properly associated with film.

To me it looks like concatenate fields are not properly searching on  
that utf8 strings…

I say that because some of our films have utf8 in the titles. The  
title is stored on the table itself and is accessed like this:  
:fields =\> [{:field =\> :title, :facet =\> true, :sortable =\> true}]

So… what is happening to those fields it is pulling in?

Help!!!