Unicode error using PDO. Mysql Unicode problem

Are you having those ???? things on your webpage when something you entered on Mr mysql is unicode character?
Here is a fix for that

Assuming you are using PDO object in your Db Class..

$db = array containing information ....
$this->pdo = new PDO("mysql:host={$db['host']};dbname={$db['database']};charset=utf8", $db['username'], $db['password']);

Now the next task to to tell Mysql to honor unicodes:

$this->query('SET NAMES utf8');
$this->query('SET CHARACTER SET utf8');
$this->query('SET COLLATION_CONNECTION="utf8_general_ci"');

where your query function could look like

public function query($query, $params=array())
	{
		$results=array();
		if (!empty($this->pdo))
		{
			try
			{
				$stmt=$this->pdo->prepare($query);
				$stmt->execute($params);
				$results=$stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
			}
			catch(PDOException $exception)
			{
				echo "error occured";
				//logit or whatever
				die();
			}
		}
		return $results;
	}

Yea this would take care of the problem. There are certain things you have to do on the mysql database itself to handle unicode but I will not discuss those here
Hope it would help somebody..

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