Best MySQL Collation to Use with PHP: A Practical Guide

Choosing the right collation in MySQL for PHP applications depends on your use case, language requirements, and compatibility needs. Here’s a breakdown of the best practices and commonly recommended options.

Understanding MySQL Collations and Encodings

1. Encoding defines how characters are stored (e.g., UTF-8, UTF-16).
2. Collation determines how characters are compared and sorted.

For PHP applications, ensuring consistent encoding and collation across the database, PHP scripts, and web pages is critical to prevent data corruption or unexpected behavior.

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