Set character set using MySQLi - php

Question

I'm fetching data in Arabic from MySQL tables with MySQLi. So I usually use this in procedural style:
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
mysql_query('SET CHARACTER SET utf8');
Now I am using the OOP style so I am trying to see if there is something I could set rather than the above?
I only found this in PHP manual so I did it, but what about setting names to UTF8?
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");

Answer 1

It's the same:
$mysqli->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
From the manual:
This is the preferred way to change the charset. Using mysqli::query()
to execute SET NAMES .. is not recommended.
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8"); is just enough, let the mysqli db driver do the thing for you.

Answer 2

You should use
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");
Don't use SET NAMES or SET CHARACTER SET explicitly when using MySQLi., and certainly don't use both like the question asker here originally was. Reasons that this is a bad idea:
Calling SET CHARACTER SET utf8 after SET NAMES utf8 actually just undoes some of the work that SET NAMES did.
The PHP manual explicitly warns us to use mysqli_set_charset, not SET NAMES:
This is the preferred way to change the charset. Using mysqli_query() to set it (such as SET NAMES utf8) is not recommended. See the MySQL character set concepts section for more information.
Under the hood, mysqli_set_charset is just a wrapper for mysql_set_character_set from the MySQL C API (or its mysqlnd equivalent). Looking at the docs for that function, we can see the difference between it and SET NAMES:
This function works like the SET NAMES statement, but also sets the value of mysql->charset, and thus affects the character set used by mysql_real_escape_string()
In other words, $mysqli->set_charset('foo') will do everything SET NAMES foo does and also ensure that mysqli_real_escape_string respects the new encoding. Admittedly, if you're only using encodings like Latin 1 and UTF 8 that strictly extend ASCII (that is, which encode all ASCII strings exactly as they would be encoded in ASCII), then using SET NAMES instead of set_charset won't break anything. However, if you're using more unusual encodings like GBK, then you could end up garbling your strings or even introducing SQL injection vulnerabilities that bypass mysqli_real_escape_string.
It's thus good practice to only use set_charset, not SET NAMES. There's nothing that SET NAMES does that set_charset doesn't, and set_charset avoids the risk of mysqli_real_escape_string behaving incorrectly (or even insecurely).

Answer 3

You can use this. Its realy nice for mysqli Character Set
$dbhost = "localhost";
$dbuser = "root";
$dbpass = "dbpass";
$dbname = "dbname";
$conn = mysqli_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass,$dbname);
mysqli_query($conn,"SET CHARACTER SET 'utf8'");
mysqli_query($conn,"SET SESSION collation_connection ='utf8_unicode_ci'");

Answer 4

For procedural style lovers.
// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
/* change character set to utf8 */
mysqli_set_charset($conn,"utf8");

Answer 5

mysqli_query($conn,"SET NAMES 'latin5'");
$conn = connection string