Title: Forms, encoding, mysql question Last modified: August 18, 2016 --- # Forms, encoding, mysql question * [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/) * I have a question about how WP processes forms. I am trying to build a little MySQL database that can be populated by an online form for a side project. It is for books. I need to enter titles in 2 languages. Thus I set it up for UTF- 8 just like my WordPress install. Unfortunately it only seems to render the characters properly when I have my browser to to UTF-8 when I type in the data, and also UTF-8 when I try to read the output on the webpage. My WordPress install works fine with both languages, and no need to switch the encoding in the browser. I am a n00b when it comes to the specifics of charset encoding. Can anyone point me to a source on how to do this? Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total) * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487040) * Nothing? * [moshu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/moshu/) * (@moshu) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487041) * I am no coder by any means… but what is the encoding on the page where your online form collects the data? If it s NOT utf-8, then what do you expect? * EDIT. This one is also a good read: [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-connection.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-connection.html) * Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/) * (@otto42) * WordPress.org Admin * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487042) * Add this to your webpage’s HEAD section: * `` * (That should all be on one line, no breaks) * Alternatively, configure your webserver to send a UTF-8 content type in the http headers. * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487043) * The following is the head of the input page: * ` Media Admin Panel * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487044) * As for the server, WP is installed on the same server. In fact, the Media DB table I put together is in the same DB as WP. I have no problem typing Japanese and English on WP. There must be some code for passing characters that I am not putting into my form… * Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/) * (@otto42) * WordPress.org Admin * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487045) * If you don’t force the encoding, and in Firefox right click and go to “View Page Info”, what does the encoding show up as? * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487047) * I commented out the encoding on all pages (admin, japanese output and english output) and then did what you said in Firefox and it told me: ISO-8859-1 * Something I should mention, this is written in perl, not PHP. I don’t know if that has an effect on the outcome. I was hoping it was just encoding. * EDIT: Also, looking up the db on phpMyAdmin the MySQL charset is UTF-8 and MySQL connection collation is utf8_unicode_ci * [moshu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/moshu/) * (@moshu) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487048) * I guess Otto didn’t suggest to comment out the charset metatag, but to look at the page without setting your browser to utf-8 and see what is the encoding that it gets automatically… * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487051) * Oh! Okay, well I tried that and got the same thing: ISO-8859-1 * So the meta tag isn’t forcing the charset to actually change… what to do? * Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/) * (@otto42) * WordPress.org Admin * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487055) * A few things: a) The meta tag needs to be closed. So either change the end to`/ >` or add a `` after it. Always close all tags. b) UTF-8 should be capitalized. iso-8859-1 should not. c) If you are writing this as a script, just set the Content- Type header directly. It should be “text/html; charset=UTF-8”. In PHP, I would do this with: `header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");` before any output was made, so probably right at the top of the script. I do not know what the Perl equivalent of this would be. * Thread Starter [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * (@younghusband) * [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487059) * Well, I closed the tag but in FF the encoding still comes up as ISO-8859-1. ( in the META section is states UTF-8…) * Still no go though… * I found out how to set the charset in perl: * `print "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8nn";` * I will have to consult a perl pro to get this into the script and see if that works. * Thanks for your help Otto and Moshu. Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total) The topic ‘Forms, encoding, mysql question’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [encoding](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/encoding/) * [forms](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/forms/) * [MySQL](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/mysql/) * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/) * 11 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [younghusband](https://wordpress.org/support/users/younghusband/) * Last activity: [19 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/forms-encoding-mysql-question/#post-487059) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics