A sticky and install note to clear the character encoding issue ?

We have discussed this before but I see the number of post regarding character encoding rising steadily... lots of people point to hacks and fixes that they shouldn’t apply since the issue is resolved (at least according to JIRA : http://svn.modxcms.com/jira/browse/MODX-185).

The most quoted fix is the global $database_connection_method; added to manager\includes\extenders\dbapi.mysql.class.inc.php (see http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,28897.msg175744.html#msg175744).

I have pointed people to Jason’s great explanations of the issue at hand (http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,25128.msg154304.html#msg154304 and http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,29760.msg180851.html#msg180851).

I doesn’t seem to do the trick, unfortunately.

I was thinking we should add a very clear note in the installer and a sticky to the forums, be done with this once and for all... What do you think ?

There is also this problem that was fixed after RC2...

http://svn.modxcms.com/jira/browse/MODX-489

Quote from: davidm at Dec 16, 2008, 01:13 PM

We have discussed this before but I see the number of post regarding character encoding rising steadily... lots of people point to hacks and fixes that they shouldn’t apply since the issue is resolved (at least according to JIRA ... <snip>

I[t] doesn’t seem to do the trick, unfortunately.

I was thinking we should add a very clear note in the installer and a sticky to the forums, be done with this once and for all... What do you think ?

A very clear note about a fix that appears doesn’t work after all? I’m confused.

I am confused too, but it would seem this doesn’t help the growing post count about character encoding issues (I think something like 50+ posts)... that’s especially true of the french forums, since french has lots of accented characters but I guess that could be also true of other local communities.

I have been meaning to post a sticky about this, because it has become a support "drain" and even after explaining (or rather, translating what Jason has explained in several posts) people still think there is something wrong with modx, and still apply fixes and hacks to the core.

I’ll re-run the 0.9.6.3 RC installers with RC1 and RC2, see how they are dispayed (I honestly don’t remember). I think I’ll even go as far as making a tutorial with screen captures, and post it as a sticky in french support forums to avoid this issue to be raised again and again.

The install became more complicated with the SET NAMES vs SET CHARACTER SET option. For me the default always fails and I have to select the alternative (can’t remember which option I choose right now) and I truly don’t understand much about this option anyway (and I can imagine many understand even less than I do). I used to install modx much faster with less thinking involved in the ’old’ installer. Maybe there should only be one option in the default install and leave more options for the advanced install.

Here is an example of a "sticky" from WP which explains why the problem exists for them and how to deal with it. But even with all this information if you google this issue there are still thousands of results.

Since I mentioned it, WP does not allow you to choose the encoding during the install, you need to edit the wp-config manually to change these settings.

The fix won’t be applied until post RC2 so there’s not exiting RC with all the proper fix-ups. Would need to test the SVN version.

I am not an expert on this topic, but I had an ugly encoding problem myself a few days ago with Russian characters. The thing that confused me most is that if you make a fresh install of 0.9.6.3RC2 the encoding problem does not appear, Russian characters (for example) are displayed correctly and everything works fine. But if you do an update of an existing older installation russian characters do not work.

I finally found a solution by my own that I posted here:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,27946.msg189341.html#msg189341

I guess that this may cause the confusion for many users and therefore posts regarding the encoding issue are rising.

Bogdan could you repeat the test with the latest head version in SVN. There was a ton of work done post RC2 to hopefully rectify these issues. It definitely points to mismatched charsets/encodings/collations. We’re hoping that the solution in the trunk will properly recognize things and use the proper connection method.

Hi Ryan,

yes this is what I (also) tried to solve my Russian character problems. I took the latest SVN version instead of 0.9.6.3RC2 and did an update but it did not work:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,27946.msg188860.html#msg188860


If there where any significant changes since December 04th regarding the encoding issue I surely can try it again.

I think there were. In fact for anyone reading this thread, can you test the following build to see if it works for your character encoding issues:

http://modxcms.com/testbuilds/0963-test.tgz