MySQL 的字符集支持(Character Set Support)有两个方面:字符集(Character set)和排序方式(Collation)。对于字符集的支持细化到四个层次: 服务器(server),数据库(database),数据表(table)和连接(connection)。

查看系统的字符集和排序方式的设定可以通过下面的两条命令或mysql> status 。

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_%'; 
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | latin1 |
| character_set_connection | latin1 |
| character_set_database | latin1 |
| character_set_results | latin1 |
| character_set_server | latin1 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation_%';
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
+----------------------+-------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
上面列出的值就是系统的默认值。(很奇怪系统怎么默认是latin1的瑞典语排序方式)... 

当我们按照原来的方式通过PHP存取MySQL数据库时,就算设置了表的默认字符集为utf8并且通过UTF-8编码发送查询,你会发现存入数据库的仍然是乱码。问题就出在这个connection连接层上。解决方法是在发送查询前执行一下下面这句:
  1. SET NAMES ‘utf8’;
    它相当于下面的三句指令:
SET character_set_client = utf8; 
SET character_set_results = utf8;
SET character_set_connection = utf8;
  1. 创建数据库
mysql> create database name character set utf8;
  1. 创建表
CREATE TABLE `type` ( 
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`flag_deleted` enum('Y','N') character set utf8 NOT NULL default 'N',
`flag_type` int(5) NOT NULL default '0',
`type_name` varchar(50) character set utf8 NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
  1. 修改数据库成utf8的.
mysql> alter database name character set utf8;
  1. 修改表默认用utf8.
mysql> alter table type character set utf8;
  1. 修改字段用utf8
mysql> alter table type modify type_name varchar(50) CHARACTER SET utf8;