Can I convert my database/script to UTF-8 ?

Posted by Mohannad Otaibi on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Mohannad Otaibi
Published on 2010-06-29T04:50:16Z Indexed on 2011/01/05 14:55 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 161

Filed under:

server

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php

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database

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convert

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utf-8

How can I convert a database to support UTF-8 and convert it's old data from what ever encoding they're in to UTF-8 ?

Extra Info: I'm running a server which has many websites on it, and one of them is running WHMCS (php script to manage hosting clients). WHMCS has an iPhone application where i can browse it through iPhone, the problem is that this application will only run if everything in my website is in UTF-8 encoding.

I was using windows-1256 as encoding in my script's settings, and i tried changing that in some point of time to UTF-8 for a while then changed it back to windows-1256

so, the data in the database are some inserted using UTF standards and most of them are windows-1256

If someone could clear the picture for me, Do I need to convert every database on the server or just one DB ? what should I change?

If i had to do that manually, I'll do it but I need some expert advise.

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