How can the use of UTF-8 encoding impact the storage and retrieval of data in a PHP application?

When working with data in a PHP application, using UTF-8 encoding is crucial for proper storage and retrieval of multilingual characters. Without UTF-8 encoding, special characters may not be stored correctly in the database or displayed properly on the frontend. To ensure seamless handling of multilingual data, always set the character encoding to UTF-8 in your PHP application.

// Set UTF-8 encoding for database connection
$dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=my_database;charset=utf8';
$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';
$options = array(
    PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES utf8',
);

try {
    $pdo = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password, $options);
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    die('Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage());
}