Hibernate + MySQL: How to set the encoding utf-8 for database and tables

You can also create databases with encoding.
Simply use phpMyAdmin for the database/table creation.

There are some URL parameters you would specify in the URL of the hibernate settings to have the connection using UTF8:

<!-- Database Settings -->
<property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
<!--  for performance reasons changed to MyISAM from org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect -->
<property name="dialect">org.openmeetings.app.hibernate.utils.MySQL5MyISAMDialect</property>
<property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/openmeetings?autoReconnect=true&amp;useUnicode=true&amp;createDatabaseIfNotExist=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf-8</property>    

<property name="hibernate.connection.CharSet">utf8</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.characterEncoding">utf8</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.useUnicode">true</property>

You don't need to set the whole encoding in the database to utf8 Only if you are using

<!-- Database Scheme Auto Update -->
<property name="hbm2ddl.auto">update</property>   

You WILL have to set the default encoding of MySQL to utf8. Cause the hbm2dll will use the default encoding of the database.

You might still use hbm2ddl.auto, and modify the table's of the database manually to have utf8 collation.

If you are not using hbm2ddl.auto, you can simply create the tables with your favorite encoding. No need to set the database to a special encoding.

Sebastian

Consider changing the connection url configuration like this:

<property name="hibernate.connection.url">
    jdbc:mysql://localhost/yourdatabase?UseUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf8
</property>

It solves the case.

How to change the encoding to UTF-8?

I used a local dialect class that extended the MySQLDialect and changed the table-type string:

public class LocalMysqlDialect extends MySQLDialect {
    @Override
    public String getTableTypeString() {
        return " DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8";
    }
}

I was actually extending the MySQL5InnoDBDialect type so I was really using:

public class LocalMysqlDialect extends MySQL5InnoDBDialect {
    @Override
    public String getTableTypeString() {
        return " ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8";
    }
}