Setting connection charset in Doctrine DBAL with comparison to PHP PDO - php

Question

Are there any needs for using set names ourcharset with DBAL with PHP >=5.3.2 and <5.3.6?
Prior to PHP 5.3.6, the charset option in PDO connection was ignored.
If we were running an older version of PHP, we had to use set names ourcharset.
Actual Doctrine DBAL 2.5.1 require PHP >=5.3.2.
I can't find what Doctrine team is advising if someone have PHP <5.3.6 version.
DBAL is mostly based on PDO, but it also have some improvements over it, so I was thinking maybe this was improved... but at Doctrine DBAL documentation page I have found only this:
Up until PHP 5.3.6 PDO has a security problem when using non ascii
compatible charsets. Even if specifying the charset using “SET NAMES”,
emulated prepared statements and PDO#quote could not reliably escape
values, opening up to potential SQL injections. If you are running PHP
5.3.6 you can solve this issue by passing the driver option “charset” to Doctrine PDO MySQL driver. Using SET NAMES does not suffice!
In PDO to this time I have done:
<?php
$dsn = 'mysql:host='.$_SESSION['options']['host'].';port='.$_SESSION['options']['port'].';dbname='.$_SESSION['options']['dbname'].';charset='.$_SESSION['options']['charset'];
try {
$conn = new \PDO($dsn, $_SESSION['options']['user'], $_SESSION['options']['pass']);
if(version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.6', '<')) //is this required with DBAL?
$conn->exec("set names {$_SESSION['options']['charset']}");
} catch (\PDOException $e) {
trigger_error($e->getMessage(), E_USER_ERROR);
}
?>
With DBAL it's:
<?php
require_once "lib/autoload.php";
$config = new \Doctrine\DBAL\Configuration();
$params = array(
'dbname' => $_SESSION['options']['dbname'],
'user' => $_SESSION['options']['user'],
'password' => $_SESSION['options']['pass'],
'host' => $_SESSION['options']['host'],
'port' => $_SESSION['options']['port'],
'driver' => 'pdo_mysql',
'charset' => $_SESSION['options']['charset'],
);
try {
$conn = \Doctrine\DBAL\DriverManager::getConnection($params, $config);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
trigger_error($e->getMessage(), E_USER_ERROR);
}
?>

Answer 1

It looks that DBAL do not improved here anything.
So, if there is possibility that our app will used with PHP between >=5.3.2 and <5.3.6, then yes, use additional SET NAMES:
<?php
require_once "lib/autoload.php";
$config = new \Doctrine\DBAL\Configuration();
$params = array(
'dbname' => $_SESSION['options']['dbname'],
'user' => $_SESSION['options']['user'],
'password' => $_SESSION['options']['pass'],
'host' => $_SESSION['options']['host'],
'port' => $_SESSION['options']['port'],
'driver' => 'pdo_mysql',
'charset' => $_SESSION['options']['charset'],
);
if(version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.6', '<'))
$params['driverOptions'] = array(1002=>'SET NAMES '.$_SESSION['options']['charset']);
//"1002" is value of constant MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND
try {
$conn = \Doctrine\DBAL\DriverManager::getConnection($params, $config);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
trigger_error($e->getMessage(), E_USER_ERROR);
}
?>