Should I be using UTF-8 mysql tables/database?

Rails
1

Hi,

Should I be using mysql tables/daatbase encoded in UTF-8 instead of
the default latin1? What are the benefits of one vs. the other?

There is the possibility of needing to support other languages in the
future. We currently are running the latest ruby 1.8 and rails 2.1
(will probably upgrade to 2.2 in the near future).

Many thanks,

Will

2

Should I be using mysql tables/daatbase encoded in UTF-8 instead of
the default latin1? What are the benefits of one vs. the other?

There is the possibility of needing to support other languages in the
future. We currently are running the latest ruby 1.8 and rails 2.1
(will probably upgrade to 2.2 in the near future).
I think you just answered your own question. The reason to use UTF-8
would be to support other languages, especially languages that are not
based on latin.

3

Robert W. wrote:

Should I be using mysql tables/daatbase encoded in UTF-8 instead of
the default latin1? What are the benefits of one vs. the other?

There is the possibility of needing to support other languages in the
future. We currently are running the latest ruby 1.8 and rails 2.1
(will probably upgrade to 2.2 in the near future).

I think you just answered your own question. The reason to use UTF-8
would be to support other languages, especially languages that are not
based on latin.

I thought UTF-8 was the default for HTML, and therefor the default for
The Web,
unless otherwise specified.

However, in the words of Joel Spolsky, “There is no such thing as plain
text”.
If you chose not to decide which encoding to use, you still have made a
choice…

–
Phlip

4

Rails 2.x handles all text as UTF-8 by default. My question is if
mysql should be utf-8 as well. Is there any benefit leaving the mysql
database as latin1?

5

More and more MYSQL seems to be heading into needing to set your table
into the necessary language set. Some people suggest leaving it in
Latin has better performance etc, but I have been putting the data
into UTF-8 tables for compatibility, this seems to be the cleanest
when using MYSQL dumps and moving data to use the data in other
locations without all the characters getting screwed up.

But if you want to keep it in Latin you can, but I suggest not to.

Cheers

Richard