MySQL Emoji Support Solution (MySQL 5.7)

Recently working on a content-based product, we needed to store emoji codes in comments. For MySQL, supporting emoji characters requires some additional work.

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Database Server Level

1. Server Configuration File mysqld.cnf

Add the following under [mysqld]:

character-set-server=utf8mb4

If your MySQL is running in Docker and [mysqld] is the last section, you can use the following command:

echo "character-set-server=utf8mb4" >> /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

Use:

more /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

to check if the result is correct.

2. Client Configuration File mysql.cnf

Add the following under [mysql]:

default-character-set=utf8mb4

Similar to step 1, you can also use the following command to add it:

echo "default-character-set=utf8mb4" >> /etc/mysql/conf.d/mysql.cnf

3. Restart the Database

*** Note: *** If you are using Docker, remember to commit:

docker commit CONTAINER_ID [REPOSITORY[:TAG]]

Database Schema Script Level

1. Database Support

ALTER DATABASE database_name CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

2. Table Support

ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;