Confluence Docs 3.0 : Configuring Database Character Encoding This page last changed on Aug 11, 2009 by pwhite. On this page: JDBC connection settings MySQL Creating a UTF-8 database MySQL PostgreSQL For PostgreSQL running under Windows For PostgreSQL running under Linux Updating existing database to UTF-8 MySQL database with existing data Testing database encoding The database used with Confluence should be configured to use the same character encoding as Confluence. The recommended encoding is Unicode UTF-8. There are two places where character encoding may need to be configured: when creating the database when connecting to the database (JDBC connection URL or properties). The configuration details for each type of database are different. Some examples are below. ## JDBC connection settings #### MySQL Append "useUnicode=true to your JDBC URL:
    jdbc:mysql://hostname:port/database?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8
| If you are modifying `confluence.cfg.xml` directly rather than via the Confluence Installation GUI, you'll need to escape out the & in the URL string as this is a reserved XML token and will break the syntax when the XML is parsed. An effective URL could be similar to:
    <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://hostname:port/database?autoReconnect=true&amp;useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf8</property>
1. ## Creating a UTF-8 database #### MySQL Create a UTF-8 database with binary UTF-8 collation. Binary UTF-8 provides case-sensitive collation.
       CREATE DATABASE confluence CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;
2. You will also need to set the `Server Characterset` to `utf8`. This can be done by adding the following in `my.ini` for Windows or `my.cnf` for other OS. It has to be declared in the Server section, which is the section after `[mysqld]`:
       [mysqld]
       default-character-set=utf8
4. Use the `status` command to verify database character encoding information. Screenshot: Using the Status Command to Verify Database Character Encoding In some cases, the individual tables collation and character encoding may differ from the one that the database as a whole has been configured to use. Please use the command below to ensure all tables within your Confluence database are correctly configured to use UTF-8 character encoding and binary UTF-8 collation:
       use confluence;
       show table status;
   Check for the value listed under the Collation column, to ensure it has been set to `utf8_bin` (that is, case-sensitive) collation for all tables. If not, then this can be changed by the following command, executed for each table in the Confluence database:
       ALTER TABLE tablename CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;
Please substitute the <tablename> above, with each table within the confluence database. Relevant MySQL manual for more detailed explanation: Specifying Character Sets and Collations documentation. Connection Character Sets and Collations. SHOW TABLE STATUS Syntax. ALTER TABLE Syntax. #### PostgreSQL
    CREATE DATABASE confluence WITH ENCODING 'UNICODE';
Or from the command-line:
    $ createdb -E UNICODE confluence
For more information see the PostgreSQL documentation. #### For PostgreSQL running under Windows Please note that international characters sets are only fully supported and functional when using PostgreSQL 8.1 and above under Microsoft Windows. #### For PostgreSQL running under Linux
| Please make sure you check the following to ensure proper handling of international characters in your database
When PostgreSQL creates an initial database cluster, it sets certain important configuration options based on the host enviroment. The command responsible for creating the PostgreSQL environment `initdb` will check environment variables such as `LC_CTYPE` and `LC_COLLATE` (or the more general `LC_ALL`) for settings to use as database defaults related to international string handling. As such it is important to make sure that your PostgreSQL environment is configured correctly before you install Confluence. To do this, connect to your PostgreSQL instance using `pgsql` and issue the following command:
    SHOW LC_CTYPE;
If LC_CTYPE is set to either "C" or "POSIX" then certain string functions such as converting to and from upper and lower case will not work correctly with international characters. Correct settings for this value take the form `<LOCALE>.<ENCODING>` (`en_AU.UTF8` for example). If your LC_CTYPE is incorrect please check the PostgreSQL documentation for information on configuring database localisation. It is not easy to change these settings with a database that already contains data. ## Updating existing database to UTF-8 #### MySQL database with existing data
| Before proceeding with the following changes, please backup your database.
This example shows how to change your database from latin1 to utf8. Dump the database to a text file using mysqldump tool from the command-line : `mysqldump -p --default_character-set=latin1 -u <username> --skip-set-charset confluence > confluence_database.sql` copy `confluence_database.sql` to `confluence_utf8.sql` Open `confluence_utf8.sql` in a text editor and change all character sets from 'latin1' to 'utf8' Encode all the latin1 characters as UTF-8: `recode latin1..utf8 confluence_utf8.sql` (the recode utility is described at http://directory.fsf.org/recode.html; it can actually be downloaded from http://recode.progiciels-bpi.ca/, and is available for Ubuntu via `apt-get`) In MySQL: `DROP DATABASE confluence;` `CREATE DATABASE confluence CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;` Finally, reimport the UTF-8 text file: `mysql -u <username> -p --default-character-set=utf8 --max_allowed_packet=64M confluence < /home/confluence/confluence_utf8.sql` To support large imports, the parameter '--max_allowed_packet=64M' used above sets the maximum size of an SQL statement to be very large. In some circumstances, you may need to increase it further, especially if attachments are stored in the database. ### Testing database encoding See Troubleshooting Character Encodings for a number of tests you can run to ensure your database encoding is correct. ##### RELATED TOPICS: Character encodings in Confluence Known Issues for MySQL Attachments: mysql-database-creation-and-status-check-via-console.png (image/png)

Document generated by Confluence on Nov 05, 2009 23:34