Using UTF8 in MySQL database for MODx?

Is it OK to set up my MySQL database for MODx to use the UTF8 character set, or are there any special issues that I should be aware of?

I’m about to start developing a new website using MODx 1.0*, but the MySQL package (5.0) on my server is installed by default as follows:

Server characterset: latin1
Db characterset: latin1
Client characterset: latin1
Conn. characterset: latin1


Is it just a case of creating my MODx database as follows:



and assuming that this will correctly override the MySQL server defaults, or is there anything else that I need to be aware of?

Thanks for any advice.


* And congratulations on making it to the 1.0 release!

That should take care of it and is a recommended Good Thing™.

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 20, 2009, 06:09 AM

That should take care of it and is a recommended Good Thing™.

Thanks, Ryan.

Just to double-check (I’m slowly reading through Chapter 9 of the MySQL manual), do you know whether MODx itself will then Do the Right Thing™ about explicitly specifying character sets when it connects to the server (even though the server defaults (eg, character_set_connection) are all still set to latin1)?

(If need be, I guess I could change the server settings* to utf8 (etc), as the database server isn’t serving any other databases (at present), so this shouldn’t have any ill-effects ..but I haven’t read that page of the fine manual yet. )


*aside: I’m a little surprised that my distro’s MySQL package doesn’t yet ship with UTF8 by default; despite the phenomenal progress that has been made in recent years, I guess we’re not quite free of Latin1-isms and (ugh) ASCIIisms just yet..