What are the best practices for handling character encoding and collation when interacting with a MySQL database in PHP?

When interacting with a MySQL database in PHP, it is important to ensure that character encoding and collation are properly set to avoid issues with data storage and retrieval. To handle this, you should set the character set and collation for the database connection, tables, and columns to match the encoding used in your application. This can be achieved by using the "SET NAMES" query to specify the character set and collation for the connection. 

// Set character encoding and collation for MySQL connection
$dsn = "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase;charset=utf8";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

$options = array(
    PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES utf8',
);

try {
    $pdo = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password, $options);
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    echo "Connected to the database successfully";
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}

Keywords

Character encoding Collation MySQL database PHP Interactions

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