Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

Question

The default collation for stored procedure parameters is utf8_general_ci and you can't mix collations, so you have four options:

Option 1: add COLLATE to your input variable:

SET @rUsername = ‘aname’ COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci; -- COLLATE added
CALL updateProductUsers(@rUsername, @rProductID, @rPerm);

Option 2: add COLLATE to the WHERE clause:

CREATE PROCEDURE updateProductUsers(
    IN rUsername VARCHAR(24),
    IN rProductID INT UNSIGNED,
    IN rPerm VARCHAR(16))
BEGIN
    UPDATE productUsers
        INNER JOIN users
        ON productUsers.userID = users.userID
        SET productUsers.permission = rPerm
        WHERE users.username = rUsername COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci -- COLLATE added
        AND productUsers.productID = rProductID;
END

Option 3: add it to the IN parameter definition (pre-MySQL 5.7):

CREATE PROCEDURE updateProductUsers(
    IN rUsername VARCHAR(24) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci, -- COLLATE added
    IN rProductID INT UNSIGNED,
    IN rPerm VARCHAR(16))
BEGIN
    UPDATE productUsers
        INNER JOIN users
        ON productUsers.userID = users.userID
        SET productUsers.permission = rPerm
        WHERE users.username = rUsername
        AND productUsers.productID = rProductID;
END

Option 4: alter the field itself:

ALTER TABLE users CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Unless you need to sort data in Unicode order, I would suggest altering all your tables to use utf8_general_ci collation, as it requires no code changes, and will speed sorts up slightly.

UPDATE: utf8mb4/utf8mb4_unicode_ci is now the preferred character set/collation method. utf8_general_ci is advised against, as the performance improvement is negligible. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/766996/1432614

I spent half a day searching for answers to an identical "Illegal mix of collations" error with conflicts between utf8_unicode_ci and utf8_general_ci.

I found that some columns in my database were not specifically collated utf8_unicode_ci. It seems mysql implicitly collated these columns utf8_general_ci.

Specifically, running a 'SHOW CREATE TABLE table1' query outputted something like the following:

| table1 | CREATE TABLE `table1` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`col1` varchar(4) CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL,
`col2` int(11) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`col1`,`col2`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci |

Note the line 'col1' varchar(4) CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL does not have a collation specified. I then ran the following query:

ALTER TABLE table1 CHANGE col1 col1 VARCHAR(4) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL;

This solved my "Illegal mix of collations" error. Hope this might help someone else out there.

I had a similar problem, but it occurred to me inside procedure, when my query param was set using variable e.g. SET @value='foo'.

What was causing this was mismatched collation_connection and Database collation. Changed collation_connection to match collation_database and problem went away. I think this is more elegant approach than adding COLLATE after param/value.

To sum up: all collations must match. Use SHOW VARIABLES and make sure collation_connection and collation_database match (also check table collation using SHOW TABLE STATUS [table_name]).

A bit similar to @bpile answer, my case was a my.cnf entry setting collation-server = utf8_general_ci. After I realized that (and after trying everything above), I forcefully switched my database to utf8_general_ci instead of utf8_unicode_ci and that was it:

ALTER DATABASE `db` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Answer is adding to @Sebas' answer - setting the collation of my local environment. Do not try this on production.

ALTER DATABASE databasename CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

ALTER TABLE tablename CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

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