Jdbc (mysql) unicode behavior

Question

I have a Mysql database with two UTF-8 tables. Let's call them Source and Destination.

Using clojure.java.jdbc I successfully retrieve a field from Source, a field which contains the 'ă' symbol. Upon trying to save that string in the Destination, I find a '?' in the place where the 'ă' symbol should have been.

This is the sequence that actually saves the record:

(jdbc/update-or-insert-values
 "destination"
 ["lexeme = ?" word]
 record)

Does anybody have an idea as to why this is happening?

Answer 1

If you used the example from the Wiki, one obvious thing missing from there is setting the connection encoding. If you didn't catch that here is the untested example with encoding:

(use 'clojure.java.jdbc)

(let [db-host "localhost"
      db-port 3306
      db-name "a_database"]

  (def db {:classname "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" ; must be in classpath
           :subprotocol "mysql"
           :subname (str "//" db-host ":" db-port "/" db-name "?characterEncoding=UTF-8")
           ; Any additional keys are passed to the driver
           ; as driver-specific properties.
           :user "a_user"
           :password "secret"}))