Inserting latin chars in mysql using php? - php

Question

I have a database that contains latin chars like á, é, ç etc. I can insert tuples with those chars using the MySQL admin interface by writing the SQL insert statements there. I can also read and display them without any problem. But I can't insert new data properly using PHP.
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "", "budgets");
$data = mysqli_real_escape_string($mysqli, "bananá");
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO items(id_budget, description, unit_price, quantity) VALUES (1, ?, 3, 3);");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $data);
$stmt->execute();
I have read several threads suggesting to use mysqli_real_escape_string(), and making sure the charsets were configured properly, but nothing worked.
I tried using different charsets in the database but the á is always replaced by strange symbols. Currently I'm using utf8_general_ci as the charset of the database.
Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Answer 1

First thing setup your table rows collcation to utf8_unicode_c
And add $mysqli->set_charset("utf8"); to your connection code
Finaly your code should look like this :
$mysqli = mysqli_connect(HOST_NAME,DB_USER,DB_PASS,DB_NAME);
if($mysqli === false) {
die("Something was wrong ! Please try again later."); // Error if connection not ok.
}
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");
$data = "bananá";
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO items(id_budget, description, unit_price, quantity) VALUES (1, ?, 3, 3);");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $data);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->close();
$mysqli->close();