mysqli::set_charset

(PHP 5 >= 5.0.5, PHP 7)

Sets the default client character set

bool mysqli::set_charset ( string $charset )

Object oriented style

Procedural style

bool mysqli_set_charset ( mysqli $link , string $charset )

Sets the default character set to be used when sending data from and to the database server.

Parameters:

link

Procedural style only: A link identifier returned by mysqli_connect() or mysqli_init()

charset

The charset to be set as default.

Returns:

Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.

Notes:

To use this function on a Windows platform you need MySQL client library version 4.1.11 or above (for MySQL 5.0 you need 5.0.6 or above).

This is the preferred way to change the charset. Using mysqli_query() to set it (such as SET NAMES utf8) is not recommended. See the MySQL character set concepts section for more information.

Examples:

mysqli::set_charset() example

Object oriented style

<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "test");

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

printf("Initial character set: %s\n", $mysqli->character_set_name());

/* change character set to utf8 */
if (!$mysqli->set_charset("utf8")) {
    printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $mysqli->error);
    exit();
} else {
    printf("Current character set: %s\n", $mysqli->character_set_name());
}

$mysqli->close();
?>

Procedural style

<?php
$link = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'my_user', 'my_password', 'test');

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

printf("Initial character set: %s\n", mysqli_character_set_name($link));

/* change character set to utf8 */
if (!mysqli_set_charset($link, "utf8")) {
    printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", mysqli_error($link));
    exit();
} else {
    printf("Current character set: %s\n", mysqli_character_set_name($link));
}

mysqli_close($link);
?>

The above examples will output something similar to:

Initial character set: latin1
Current character set: utf8