The more I mess with this, the more I wonder if we shouldn’t advise people check their server settings and their database permissions before making a decision.
Ironically I just checked my server (cPanel) and all of the MODx databases (there are 5) are all correctly set to UTF8
All the other stuff I have messed with or installed is all latin1. I am on a VPS so I may have more privileges than shared hosting users. The catch is you do not set the collation on creation in cpanel, you need to alter the db after creating it and before installing MODx.
I cut my teeth with mysql pre 4.1 so the concern about collation is a new or recent one for me. But I humbly think that anyone who is going to work with this stuff professionally needs to have some understanding of this before hand. I only can blame myself for my errors in having assumed that it was not an issue. I think this is a a trend throughout the web as things get more specific and I get older
If I recall correctly modx identifies the collation of the database before hand and pre-fills the field accordingly, here is the code that does that:
// check the database collation if not specified in the configuration
if ($upgradeable && (!isset ($database_connection_charset) || empty($database_connection_charset))) {
if (!$rs = @ mysql_query("show session variables like 'collation_database'")) {
$rs = @ mysql_query("show session variables like 'collation_server'");
}
if ($rs && $collation = mysql_fetch_row($rs)) {
$database_collation = $collation[1];
}
if (empty ($database_collation)) {
$database_collation = 'utf8_general_ci';
}
$database_charset = substr($database_collation, 0, strpos($database_collation, '_'));
$database_connection_charset = $database_charset;
} else {
$database_collation = 'utf8_general_ci';
}
This is basically telling you that the server setting is xx and if it can’t get a value it defaults to utf8.
I think an informational page before setting up the database would indeed be a great idea. BTW, in this cPanel situation, do you have rights to ALTER DATABASE? cPanel is very common and it might be worth mentioning in the page how to deal with it.
Time to feed the wiki...it’s been hungry. BUt I heard that it is craving some video casts
BTW - anyone seen the cool install videocast for installing Duppy 6, something like this could really help newcommers:
http://ftp.drupal.org/files/videocasts/Install-D6.mp4
To bad I sound like an idiot, need to have a good voice to do a cast
MODX Staff
☆ A M B ☆
