[SOLVED] Store Chinse character in Mysql

[keenlearner]

My site is 90% english, however there are some pages that i need to display in chinese character. In fact, arabic, russia, spanish. In mysql, i try to use collation utf8_general_ci . So when i input the data using phpmyadmin, i type chinese character e.g 福(lucky) into the record, save it. Unfortunately when i use php to get the data from mysql database and present it on the web, it appear as '?' (question mark). How do i show it on the web correctly ? Thank you.

[effigy]

What charset are you using in your meta tag? [url=http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html]More information.[/url]

[keenlearner]

Thank's for the reply. it's utf-8.

[effigy]

Are you sure the database is storing it correctly? What does[tt] SELECT HEX(field) from TABLE [/tt]give you for the character?

[keenlearner]

I never come acroos with HEX(), however when i try that in mysql command line client, it shows E4B8BD for 丽 character, does it mean the database does not store correctly ? When i see in phpmyadmin the character shown as 丽. Is there a special command to be used when connecting to the database ?

[effigy]

Hmmm.... It sounds like things are working properly. Was your table assigned a character set initially? You can check via[tt] SHOW CREATE TABLE [i]table_name[/i][/tt].

[keenlearner]

Thank you so much, My problem solved, we should add this code before querying for data
[code]mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8", $connection);
mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8", $connection); [/code]
;D