# UTF-8 not working (Mac OS X) **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 26, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271 "2008-02-26T22:58:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeronimo)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271/1 "2008-02-26T22:58:39Z")
I’m trying to get UTF-8 working, but I can’t get it work fully. I have the data in my MySQL-database, the tables and fields are in utf-8 charset. If I query the database from the terminal, all UTF-8 characters show up nicely. The pages I’m outputting have the following header ``` And Unicode characters I’m putting directly into the view files are also showing up correctly. The encoding parameter in database.yml is set to utf8. However, strings from the database are output mangled, both in Safari and Firefox. Is there anything I’ve missed? I’m running Mac OS X 10.5.2, Rails 2.0.2, Ruby 1.8.6, MySQL gem 2.7. Any help is appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeronimo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2008, 10:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271/2 "2008-02-27T10:36:15Z")
could be just a question of the font used in your browsers? did you check the generated html-source? ---
**Author:** ![jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeronimo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 1:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271/3 "2008-03-10T13:12:58Z")
On Feb 27, 6:17 am, jeronimo [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > could be just a question of the font used in your browsers? > > did you check the generated html-source? > > Yes, I checked: the UTF-8characters from the database are output as > several different characters, so somewhere UTF-8 was interpreted > incorrectly, but I have no clue where. I had the same problem, tried everything and it came down to removing/ commenting out the ‘encoding’ line from each environment section of my database.yml. ---
**Author:** ![jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeronimo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2008, 11:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271/4 "2008-02-27T11:17:25Z")
> could be just a question of the font used in your browsers? > did you check the generated html-source? Yes, I checked: the UTF-8characters from the database are output as several different characters, so somewhere UTF-8 was interpreted incorrectly, but I have no clue where. ---
**Author:** ![jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@jeronimo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeronimo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 1:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-not-working-mac-os-x/130271/5 "2008-03-10T13:23:37Z")
On Feb 27, 6:17 am, jeronimo [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > could be just a question of the font used in your browsers? > > did you check the generated html-source? > > Yes, I checked: the UTF-8characters from the database are output as > several different characters, so somewhere UTF-8 was interpreted > incorrectly, but I have no clue where. I had the same problem, tried everything and it came down to removing/ commenting out the ‘encoding’ line from each environment section of my database.yml.