How to properly set utf8 encoding with jdbc and MySQL?

Question

JDBC and MySQL work just fine in my project except when it comes down to accented characters. This is the URL I use to access the database:

jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/dbname?useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=UTF-8

Suppose a resultSet = preparedStatement.executeQuery(), and then a System.out.println(resultSet.getString("text_with_accents"));. What's stored in the database is àèìòù (note that I've already set the right encoding in the database and all its tables), but what I get is ?????.

Is there a way to fix this?

Solution

Try to change your url like

url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/dbname?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8" 

The & must be represented as &

Comments

[Rahul Tripathi]

@pr0gma:- Can you check your my.cnf and see if your file has [client] default-character-set=utf8 [mysql] default-character-set=utf8 present?

[pr0gma]

I have no my.cnf. Should I create one? If so, where?

[Rahul Tripathi]

@pr0gma:- It should be present. You can refer this: stackoverflow.com/questions/4292769/… to get its location

[pr0gma]

Found the my.ini. Double checked, the option was already set in both the client and mysql section.

[Rick James]

characterEncoding=utf8 --> characterEncoding=UTF-8.