I am converting a spreadsheet using PHPExcel to a Database and the cell value happens to contain Russian. If I run mb_detect_encoding() I am told the text is UTF8 and if I set a header of UTF8 then I see the correct Russian characters.
However if I compile it into a string (with only addslashes involved in the process) and insert it into the table I see lots of ????. I have set the table characterset as utf8mb4 and also set the collation as utf8mb4_general_ci. I have also run $this->db->query("SET NAMES 'utf8mb4'"); on my DB connection.
I run PDO query() with my multi part insert and get the ???s but if I output the query to screen I get ÐŸÐ¾Ñ which would be valid UTF8. Why would this not be stored correctly in the database?
I have kept this question rather than deleting it so someone may find the answer helpful.
The reason I was struggling was because in SQLYog it doesn't show you the column Charset by default. There is an option which reads "Hide language options" on the Alter table view which will then reveal that when SQLyog creates a table it uses the default server Charset as opposed to what you define the table Charset to be. I'm not sure if thats correct - but the solution simply is to turn on the Column Charset settings and check they match what you are expecting.