Make MySQL default to utf8mb4

Question

How does one make MySQL default to utf8mb4 for all strings, table types, and the connection encoding? I have this in my my.cnf file:

[client]
port            = 3306
socket          = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mysqld]
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'
character-set-server = utf8mb4

Yet I still have latin8 showing up in places.

Answer 1

Connection encoding can be overriden on per-session basis, and actually it is a good practice, so you need to check actual clients.

Keep eye on:

• Databases and tables have their own encoding, you need to convert them.
• in utf8mb4 maximum varchar length that fits in index is 191, not 255 as before, so transition is not just 'copy-paste-run'
• backup dumps contain pre-transition encoding
• some tools/migrations can contain old encoding