Force MariaDB clients to use utf8mb4

Question

I'm running into an issue where I'm getting differently ordered results when querying with PHP Versus the command line. From my research, it appears that in some cases that bad encoding can cause problems with the order of the results.

That said, all my DB tables are encoded as utf8mb4, with the collation utf8mb4_general_ci. However, it doesnt seem that the mysql variables are set correctly.

I'm on Mysql 5.5.5-10.1.26-MariaDb.

Here are my CNF settings, but to be honest I don't know what I'm doing here:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mariadb]


[mysqld]

character-set-server=utf8mb4
character_set_client=utf8mb4
collation-server=utf8mb4_general_ci

The variables output from mysql:

character_set_client        utf8
character_set_connection    utf8
character_set_database      utf8mb4
character_set_filesystem    binary
character_set_results       utf8
character_set_server        utf8mb4
character_set_system        utf8
collation_connection        utf8_general_ci
collation_database          utf8mb4_unicode_ci
collation_server            utf8mb4_general_ci

Update: A person has asked for how I'm connecting to the database:

$this->connection = new PDO('mysql:host='.DB_SERVER.';dbname='.DB_NAME.';port='.DB_PORT, DB_USER, DB_PASS, $options);

Update: I've switched to utf8mb4_unicode_ci (as per suggestions in answers below).

Answer 1

You want to have character-set-client-handshake = FALSE as well.

With /etc/my.cnf.d/character-set.cnf

# https://scottlinux.com/2017/03/04/mysql-mariadb-set-character-set-and-collation-to-utf8/
# https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/setting-character-sets-and-collations/
# https://medium.com/@adamhooper/in-mysql-never-use-utf8-use-utf8mb4-11761243e434
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47566730/force-mariadb-clients-to-use-utf8mb4

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
init-connect = 'SET NAMES utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci'
character-set-server = utf8mb4

I get everything to be utf8mb4¹

MariaDB [(none)]> show variables like 'char%'; show variables like 'collation%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_connection | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

+----------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value              |
+----------------------+--------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>

however without the character-set-client-handshake line some are still utf8

MariaDB [(none)]> show variables like 'char%'; show variables like 'collation%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

+----------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value              |
+----------------------+--------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci    |
| collation_database   | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>

---

¹ character_set_system is always utf8.