character encoding - Mysql turns ' into �?

Question

How can I stop mysql from converting ' into a€? when I do an insert?

i believe it has something to do with charset or something?

I am using php to do the mysql_insert.

Answer 1

The single quotation mark you posted is called an 'acute accent', which is often converted from the generic single quotation mark by some web applications. It's a UTF8 character, which when inserted into a Latin-1 database translates to 'a€?'. This means that you need to change MySQL's charset to UTF8, or alternatively change your website's charset to Latin-1. The former would be preferred:

ALTER DATABASE YourDatabase CHARACTER SET utf8;
ALTER TABLE YourTableOne CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;
ALTER TABLE YourTableTwo CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;
...
ALTER TABLE YourTableN CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;