Forcing UTF-8 in Zend Framework with PDO

For some reason, I just had the most horrible time making sure that my connection from my Zend Framework code was speaking UTF8 at my database. Here are the key things to remember that I learned:

• Make sure to have a collation of UTF8 on your database

• Set your default charset on your table is UTF8

• Zend Framework Zend_Db_Mysql uses PDO - so use PDO commands when you create your connection to force UTF8

Ok first thing’s first. Create the database with the proper collation:

CREATE SCHEMA `mydatabasename` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

Next, define your tables with UTF8 charset:

CREATE TABLE `mynewtable` (`a` INT NULL ,`b` INT NULL) 
                          ENGINE = InnoDB DEFAULT CHARACTER SET = utf8;

Finally, if configuring your PDO/MySQL connection in application.ini, after defining the connection parameters, as I have, add the last two lines

resources.db.adapter = "pdo_mysql"
resources.db.params.host = "localhost"
resources.db.params.username = "user"
resources.db.params.password = "password"
resources.db.params.dbname = "mynewtable"
resources.db.isDefaultTableAdapter = true
resources.db.params.charset = "utf8"
resources.db.params.driver_options.1002 = "SET NAMES utf8;"

I never had a chance to track down the reasons “why” this was happening - so if anyone has any input, that would be great. But now I add this to all of my projects just to force it.