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  1. #1
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    Default Should I upgrade to UTF-8 mb4 unicode?

    I am upgrading from 1.54 to 1.55d. So far everything seems to be work fine. I read somewhere that UTF-8 mb4 can handle special characters better than the standard UTF-8 Unicode database format. I have searched everywhere for answers, and nobody talks about which UTF-8 format I should use.

    Can I simply create a new "UTF-8 mb4 Unicode Ci" database and then import the old "UTF-8 Unicode Ci" tables into it?

    I am wanting a web store that will be visible in different countries, and will allow different languages in the future. Is UTF-8 mb4 significantly better?

    Charles

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Should I upgrade to UTF-8 mb4 unicode?

    The 'utf8mb4' charset and 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci' collation in MySQL 5.7 are being popularized by sites that regularly store Emoji multibyte characters.
    If you don't need those characters in your product descriptions and customer names etc then it's possible you don't really need to switch.
    If you were running a blog and encouraging informal comments and other casual chat which you were storing in your database, then that might warrant a change for the tables which store that data.

    There's a downside to switching: If you have fields in your database set to VARCHAR(255) (or actually any number greater than 191) then you'll have to change them down to VARCHAR(191) to accommodate the shorter limits allowed in the utf8mb4 spec. In doing so you could lose data for fields that are actually storing more than 191 characters.

    There may be other caveats involved in the conversion of existing data, too.
    .

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  3. #3
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    Default Re: Should I upgrade to UTF-8 mb4 unicode?

    Thank you so much!

    What are the language limitations of the UTF-8 Unicode-ci Database? If for example, I wanted to use a Chinese language pack on my site, would I be required to use the UTF-8mb4 format? I am considering adding new languages to my site.

    Could you briefly explain what I would need to do to upgrade my database from UTF-8 Unicode ci, to UTF-8mb4 Unicode ci? I had read that you can import the old UTF-8 database directly into the new UTF-8mb4 database without any conversion. Is this true?
    Last edited by Ritalie; 28 Feb 2017 at 05:33 AM.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: Should I upgrade to UTF-8 mb4 unicode?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ritalie View Post
    What are the language limitations of the UTF-8 Unicode-ci Database? If for example, I wanted to use a Chinese language pack on my site, would I be required to use the UTF-8mb4 format?
    I don't know. I've never used Chinese language.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ritalie View Post
    Could you briefly explain what I would need to do to upgrade my database from UTF-8 Unicode ci, to UTF-8mb4 Unicode ci? I had read that you can import the old UTF-8 database directly into the new UTF-8mb4 database without any conversion. Is this true?
    Not sure. I imagine your insights into the languages may afford you better results while searching google than I would get.
    .

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