Mysql unable to store emoji in utf8mb4 collation

MySQLphpmyadmin

I can't store emoji characters in mysql datatbase.

I searched a lot, but again fails. I have followed this tutorial and changed these variables from Variables tab in phpmyadmin.

| Variable_name          | Value
----------------------------
character_set_client     | utf8
character_set_connection | utf8mb4
character_set_database   | utf8mb4
character_set_filesystem | binary
character_set_results    | utf8
character_set_server     | utf8mb4
character_set_system     | utf8
collation_connection     | utf8mb4_unicode_ci
collation_database       | utf8mb4_unicode_ci
collation_server         | utf8mb4_unicode_ci

NOTE: set_client and set_result are also utf8mb4 in Variables tab in phpmyadmin.

I even added these lines in my.ini file:

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

But again no result!! I just get ???? instead of emoji. Any idea?

Edit: SHOW CREATE TABLE emoji result

 CREATE TABLE `emoji` (
 `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `emj_text` varchar(191) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
 PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
 KEY `emj_text` (`emj_text`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=29 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Best Answer

Paraphrasing https://stackoverflow.com/a/38363567/1766831 :

Question Marks (regular ones, not black diamonds) (Se?or for Señor):

The bytes to be stored are not encoded as utf8mb4. Fix this.
The column in the database is CHARACTER SET utf8mb4. Fix this.
Also, check that the connection during reading is UTF-8. (That is, check phpmyadmin for utf8mb4.

Once ???? is stored, the Emoji is lost. That is, the INSERT side has the problem. The SELECT side may also have a problem.

Related Solutions

MySQL the.cnf won’t take any effect

The option character-set-database should not be configured in my.cnf.

Please note what the MySQL Documentation says on character-set-database:

The character set used by the default database. The server sets this variable whenever the default database changes. If there is no default database, the variable has the same value as character_set_server.

Footnote : This option is dynamic, but only the server should set this information. You should not set the value of this variable manually.

Even the Documentation says it is dynamic, it not supposed to be dynamically by any manual intervention against my.cnf. If you look inside the database subfolder, you will find a file called db.opt. EXAMPLE : When you run use dbname in the mysql client, the file /var/lib/mysql/dbname/db.opt is read in order to set character-set-specific database options contained in that file. For this reason, the variable has to be dynamic.

If you cannot access the database from the OS to see db.opt, simply run this command:

SHOW CREATE DATABASE dbname;

on any database and you will see what db.opt contains (or defaults if db.opt is not there)

mysql> show create database mysql;
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Database | Create Database                                                  |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| mysql    | CREATE DATABASE `mysql` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 */ |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

In light of this, you should try setting character-set-server in my.cnf only (or at least remove character-set-database from my.cnf). Then, run service mysql restart.

Give it a Try !!!

UPDATE #1

I sort of dealt with a question like this before : Why default character_set_server is latin1?

Looking back at my old link, I had an idea: I ran this:

mysql> select version();
+-----------+
| version() |
+-----------+
| 5.6.10    |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from information_schema.collations where COLLATION_NAME like '%kor%';
+-----------------+--------------------+----+------------+-------------+---------+
| COLLATION_NAME  | CHARACTER_SET_NAME | ID | IS_DEFAULT | IS_COMPILED | SORTLEN |
+-----------------+--------------------+----+------------+-------------+---------+
| euckr_korean_ci | euckr              | 19 | Yes        | Yes         |       1 |
+-----------------+--------------------+----+------------+-------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

You could set a Korean character set if need to.

UPDATE #2

You should leave wait_timeout and interactive_timeout out of the [client] and [mysql] groups.

MySQL database drop insanely slow

I hate the checking permissions issue.

You may have to disable key checks before the DROP DATABASE

SET unique_checks = 0;
SET foreign_key_checks = 0;
SET GLOBAL innodb_stats_on_metadata = 0;
DROP DATABASE db_madeintouch;
SET GLOBAL innodb_stats_on_metadata = 1;
SET foreign_key_checks = 1;
SET unique_checks = 1;

UPDATE 2013-04-15 18:04 EDT

I just noticed you have innodb_file_per_table OFF. What gives ?

You currently have all the InnoDB data and the corresponding index sitting in a single file.
Any CREATE TABLE statement must make data dictionary updates and look for space (small but annoying in this instance)
Internal Fragmentation of ibdata1
Dropping a table means scanning the table and its indexes for availability to lock. With data and index pages possibly fragmented, this takes spindles, seek time, and latency.
See Pictorial Representation of ibdata1 to see everything that goes into ibdata1

Recommendation : Remove all Data and Index Pages from ibdata1

This will give ibdata1 a breather to handle just data dictionary and MVCC management. In addition, ibdata1 will stay rather lean and mean and can be read more quickly.

You will need to perform the InnoDB Infrastructure Cleanup. I wrote out all the steps back on October 29, 2010 in StackOverflow.

UPDATE 2013-04-22 08:10 EDT

Three suggestions

SUGGESTION 1 : I just noticed something else. You are using an ancient version of MySQL (5.0.45). You should think about upgrading to MySQL 5.6.11 as it performs significantly faster that MySQL 5.5 and way faster than MySQL 5.0.

SUGGESTION 2 : You should also go ahead and implement the InnoDB Infrastructure Cleanup.

SUGGESTION 3 : You should also check the disk itself. If the data is sitting on a RAID10 set, one of the disks may have an issues. Check the disk controller's battery as well because it can slow down disk caching and affect read performance.