Cannot store "Pile of Poo" unicode emoji using Spring Boot Hibernate and MySQL

Question

When running the Spring Boot JPA example: https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-data-jpa/ against a MySQL database and trying to store the "pile of poo" emoji 💩I get the exception java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x92\xA9\xF0\x9F...'

I configured my database to use utf8mb4 encoding.

I know this is NOT a problem with MySQL as I am able to create a Customer and store it in the database using the MySQL client. I can even run the sample application and have it find a Customer with the "pile of poo" emoji.

2015-06-05 18:10:12.382  INFO 5119 --- [           main] s.c.a.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext : Refreshing org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext@446b0224: startup date [Fri Jun 05 18:10:12 PDT 2015]; root of context hierarchy
2015-06-05 18:10:13.567  INFO 5119 --- [           main] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Building JPA container EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default'
2015-06-05 18:10:13.588  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.jpa.internal.util.LogHelper  : HHH000204: Processing PersistenceUnitInfo [
name: default
...]
2015-06-05 18:10:13.648  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.Version                    : HHH000412: Hibernate Core {4.3.8.Final}
2015-06-05 18:10:13.649  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.cfg.Environment            : HHH000206: hibernate.properties not found
2015-06-05 18:10:13.651  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.cfg.Environment            : HHH000021: Bytecode provider name : javassist
2015-06-05 18:10:13.804  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.annotations.common.Version   : HCANN000001: Hibernate Commons Annotations {4.0.5.Final}
2015-06-05 18:10:14.086  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect            : HHH000400: Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect
2015-06-05 18:10:14.171  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.h.h.i.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory    : HHH000397: Using ASTQueryTranslatorFactory
2015-06-05 18:10:14.365  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaUpdate  : HHH000228: Running hbm2ddl schema update
2015-06-05 18:10:14.365  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaUpdate  : HHH000102: Fetching database metadata
2015-06-05 18:10:14.366  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaUpdate  : HHH000396: Updating schema
2015-06-05 18:10:14.390  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.TableMetadata   : HHH000261: Table found: poo_test.Customer
2015-06-05 18:10:14.390  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.TableMetadata   : HHH000037: Columns: [id, lastname, firstname]
2015-06-05 18:10:14.390  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.TableMetadata   : HHH000108: Foreign keys: []
2015-06-05 18:10:14.391  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.TableMetadata   : HHH000126: Indexes: [primary]
2015-06-05 18:10:14.391  INFO 5119 --- [           main] org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaUpdate  : HHH000232: Schema update complete
2015-06-05 18:10:14.777  INFO 5119 --- [           main] o.s.j.e.a.AnnotationMBeanExporter        : Registering beans for JMX exposure on startup
Customer found with findOne(1L):
--------------------------------
Customer[id=1, firstName='💩💩💩💩', lastName='💩💩💩💩']

2015-06-05 18:10:14.836  INFO 5119 --- [           main] hello.Application                        : Started Application in 2.819 seconds (JVM running for 3.077)
2015-06-05 18:10:14.837  INFO 5119 --- [       Thread-1] s.c.a.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext : Closing org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext@446b0224: startup date [Fri Jun 05 18:10:12 PDT 2015]; root of context hierarchy
2015-06-05 18:10:14.838  INFO 5119 --- [       Thread-1] o.s.j.e.a.AnnotationMBeanExporter        : Unregistering JMX-exposed beans on shutdown
2015-06-05 18:10:14.839  INFO 5119 --- [       Thread-1] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Closing JPA EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default'

This is my modified Application.java from the sample:

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application implements CommandLineRunner {

    @Autowired
    CustomerRepository repository;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class);
    }

    @Override
    public void run(String... strings) throws Exception {
        // save a couple of customers
        repository.save(new Customer("💩💩💩💩", "💩💩💩💩"));

        // fetch all customers
        System.out.println("Customers found with findAll():");
        System.out.println("-------------------------------");
        for (Customer customer : repository.findAll()) {
            System.out.println(customer);
        }
        System.out.println();

        // fetch an individual customer by ID
        Customer customer = repository.findOne(1L);
        System.out.println("Customer found with findOne(1L):");
        System.out.println("--------------------------------");
        System.out.println(customer);
        System.out.println();

    }

}

This is the application.yml file I'm using to configure my JDBC connection. I'm using a number of techniques I've found while researching this issue but nothing seems to work.

spring:

  datasource:
    url: "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/poo_test?useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=utf8&characterResultSets=utf8"
    username: root
    password: 
    connectionInitSqls: "SET NAMES utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"
    driverClassName: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
    testOnBorrow: true
    validationQuery: SELECT 1

  jpa:
    show-sql: false
    database-platform: org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: update
      naming_strategy: org.hibernate.cfg.EJB3NamingStrategy
      connection:
        CharSet: utf8mb4
        characterEncoding: utf8
        useUnicode: true

This appears to be a common problem but I've yet to find a solution. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

After trying various approaches I managed to get things working using the following application.yml

spring:

  datasource:
    url: "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/poo_test?useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=utf8"
    username: root
    password: 
    initSQL: "SET NAMES 'utf8mb4'"

  jpa:
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: update

The trick seems to be the initSQL property