Which UTF-8 Collation is Best for General-Purpose MySQL Websites Using PHP?

Selecting the Optimal Collation for MySQL with PHP Websites

When establishing a general-purpose website, it's crucial to select the appropriate collation for your MySQL database. This ensures efficient storage and retrieval of data, regardless of the potentially diverse content that may be entered.

Collation and PHP Encoding

For optimal compatibility, you should ensure that all communication channels, including MySQL, PHP, Apache, and HTML, share the same encoding, typically UTF-8. UTF-8 supports a wide range of characters and languages.

Choosing the UTF-8 Collation

MySQL offers several UTF-8 collations, each with its own characteristics:

• utf8_bin: Compares characters in binary format, providing the highest performance but sacrificing accuracy.
• utf8_general_ci: Somewhat faster than utf8_unicode_ci but less accurate in character sorting.
• utf8_unicode_ci: Provides the most accurate sorting for Unicode characters but has a marginal performance impact.
• Language-specific collations (e.g., utf8_swedish_ci): Offer the highest accuracy for sorting data specific to particular languages.

Recommended Collation

Unless you have a specific requirement for a specific language, it's generally recommended to use utf8_unicode_ci. This collation strikes a balance between accuracy and performance, ensuring that your data is sorted correctly and efficiently in most scenarios.

For more detailed information on Unicode character sets in MySQL, refer to the official documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-unicode-sets.html.

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