MySQL automatic conversion on lowercase

Question

I have multiple web services that write data inside a database table. I'd like to automatic convert uppercase strings into lowercase ones, for a specific field. Is there any mysql function that performs this task?

Suppose this is the table:

id | name | language

Sometimes, inside the language field, web services write an uppercase string (IT). I want to convert it into a lowercase string ("it"), directly inside MySQL.

thanks

Answer 1

Define triggers on the table:

CREATE TRIGGER lcase_insert BEFORE INSERT ON my_table FOR EACH ROW
SET NEW.language = LOWER(NEW.language);

CREATE TRIGGER lcase_update BEFORE UPDATE ON my_table FOR EACH ROW
SET NEW.language = LOWER(NEW.language);

Then update the existing data:

UPDATE my_table SET language = LOWER(language);