You can change the default character set to UTF8 in mysql 5.5 using below steps
1. Check current character set
mysql> show variables like “collation_database”;
+——————–+——————-+
| Variable_name | Value |
+——————–+——————-+
| collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
+——————–+——————-+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show variables like “%character%”;show variables like “%collation%”;
+————————–+—————————-+
| Variable_name | Value |
+————————–+—————————-+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | utf8 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | utf8 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+————————–+—————————-+
2. added below variables in my.cnf
[mysqld]
init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci’
init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake
3. Restarted Mysql
4. Check the default character set using below commands
mysql> show variables like “%character%”;show variables like “%collation%”;
+————————–+—————————-+
| Variable_name | Value |
+————————–+—————————-+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | utf8 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | utf8 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+————————–+—————————-+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
+———————-+—————–+
| Variable_name | Value |
+———————-+—————–+
| collation_connection | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_database | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_server | utf8_unicode_ci |
+———————-+—————–+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
5. Create database and check the default character set
mysql> SHOW CREATE DATABASE manoj;
+———-+—————————————————————————————-+
| Database | Create Database |
+———-+—————————————————————————————-+
| manoj | CREATE DATABASE `manoj` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci */ |
+———-+—————————————————————————————-+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Thanks
Manoj