Website Display's ?'s instead of Korean

Question

I uploaded my website to the new server. It works perfectly on my test server at home, there is not a different setup the databases were copied over word for word. But on the site anything that is in Korean displays as ??????. The database stored it correctly and the pages all have <meta charset="UTF-8"> I can not figure out what I am missing.

EDIT: The text displays fine in the database when I use phpMyADMIN

Answer 1

The issue is most likely a different in database collation settings between your home test server & your new remote server. Meaning that while your database was transferred correctly, the way that data is then spit out of database is a whole other thing.

What is the data collation of the database giving you an issue? By default, most MySQL installs set latin1_swedish_ci instead of utf8_general_ci for newly created databases.

Change the collation of the database & try again.

ALTER DATABASE [name of your database] CHARACTER SET utf8;

If this is a specific table, the collation can be changed as so:

ALTER TABLE [name of your table] CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;

And if it is a specific column in a table:

ALTER TABLE [name of your table] MODIFY [name of your column] [other settings] CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Or perhaps you could export the current database, create a new database with this command & reimport the data:

CREATE DATABASE [name of your database] CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

And if you want to make a permanent change to the MySQL install on the machine giving you an issue, go and edit my.cnf. The following would set the whole chain to UTF-8:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysqld]
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8

EDIT: The original poster states that the connection & DB are all UTF8 clean. But what about trying an edit to the Apache default character set. Go here & open the character set file for Apache like so:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/charset

And uncomment the line that looks like this:

#AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

So it looks like this:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

And restart Apache. This is not a great idea for a long term setup in my humble opinion, but if t solves the issue it indicates there is something in your codebase that can be changed to affect the same results without having to force Apache to force UTF8.

Answer 2

In PDO (php api), you need set charset $conn->exec('SET CHARACTER SET utf8');.

PHP example:

<?php
//한국어/조선말

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf8');

$username = 'user';
$password = 'password';
$host = 'domain';
$db = 'dbtest';

try {
    $conn = new PDO('mysql:host=' . $host . ';dbname=' . $db . ';charset=utf-8', $username, $password);
    $conn->exec('SET CHARACTER SET utf8');//This solve the problem
    $stmte = $conn->prepare('SELECT id, text FROM test LIMIT 10');
    $exec = $stmte->execute();

    if ($exec) {
        while($reg = $stmte->fetch(PDO::FETCH_OBJ)){
            echo 'id: ' . $reg->id . '<br />';
            echo 'text: ' . $reg->text . '<br /><hr />';
        }
    } else {
        echo 'Error SELECT';
    }
} catch(PDOException $e){
    echo 'PDOException: ', $e->getMessage();
}
?>

Mysql example:

CREATE DATABASE `dbtest` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

USE `dbtest`;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `test` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `text` varchar(300) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

INSERT INTO `test` (`id`, `text`) VALUES (1, '한국어/조선말');

Use phpmyadmin in your server to verify that the DATABASE on your server is "utf8", see:

In your database must be something else.

if your database is correct (after checking with the utf8) then the problem is in some PHP file.

To resolve you should save all php files (both the major and the includes)

Save your html file (or php file) in "utf8 without boom", using notepad++, see:

Add in your PHP files (in top file):

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf8');
?>

Files included should be saved in utf8-without-boom also, example:

<?php
include('YOUR FILE INCLUDED.php');// Save "YOUR FILE INCLUDED.php" in UTF8-without-boom
?>

Maybe its some page is in ANSI (for example "form.php").

Note: All PHP files must be in UTF8-without-boom format

Answer 3

Try adding lang attribute to your html tag

<html lang="ko">