Convert characters to UTF8 in MySQL (é to é)

Question

I've got a MySQL problem. My whole website except my database is in UTF8. I just recently tried to convert it to UTF8 with all kind of commands, but the main issue is still there:

the accents don't work. Instead of é, I've got é. Same for è, there is another type of weird character.

Is there an easy to convert all these charaters, let's say é, to é, in the base?

THanks a lot.

(by the way, the database is in latin1)

Answer 1

In this case, é is é interpreted as LATIN1 and converted to UTF-8. It might be that your database is trying to be helpful and converts to UTF-8 where no conversion is required.

Have you tried switching the character set on your database tables?

Answer 2

You could try this function :

CREATE TABLE `utf8decodemap` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `encoded` VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
  `decoded` VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
  UNIQUE KEY urlcodemapUIdx1(encoded),
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)  
);

INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("â","â");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("é","é");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("è","è");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ê","ê");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ë","ë");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("î","î");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ï","ï");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ô","ô");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ö","ö");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ù","ù");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("û","û");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ü","ü");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("ç","ç");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("œ","Å?");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("€","â¬");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("°","°");
INSERT INTO utf8decodemap (decoded,encoded) VALUES ("à","Ã");

DELIMITER $$
CREATE FUNCTION `utf8decoder`(str VARCHAR(4096)) RETURNS VARCHAR(4096) DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
               DECLARE X  INT;               
               DECLARE chr VARCHAR(256);
               DECLARE chrto VARCHAR(256);
               DECLARE result VARCHAR(4096);
               SET X = 1;
               WHILE X  <= (SELECT MAX(id) FROM utf8decodemap) DO
                   SET chr = (SELECT `encoded` FROM utf8decodemap WHERE id = X);
                   SET chrto = (SELECT `decoded` FROM utf8decodemap WHERE id = X);                
                           SET str = REPLACE(str,chr,chrto);
                           SET  X = X + 1;                           
               END WHILE;
               RETURN str;
       END$$

DELIMITER ; 

ex : SELECT utf8decoder(MyCol) from MYtable