Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x8E\xB6\xF0\x9F...' MySQL

Change database charset and collation

ALTER DATABASE
    database_name
    CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4
    COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

change specific table's charset and collation

ALTER TABLE
    table_name
    CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4
    COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

change connection charset in mysql driver

before

charset=utf8&parseTime=True&loc=Local

after

charset=utf8mb4&collation=utf8mb4_unicode_ci&parseTime=True&loc=Local

From this article https://hackernoon.com/today-i-learned-storing-emoji-to-mysql-with-golang-204a093454b7

I had hit the same problem and learnt the following-

Even though database has a default character set of utf-8, it's possible for database columns to have a different character set in MySQL. Modified dB and the problematic column to UTF-8:

mysql> ALTER DATABASE MyDB CHARACTER SET 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci'

mysql> ALTER TABLE database.table MODIFY COLUMN column_name VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NOT NULL;

Now creating new tables with:

> CREATE TABLE My_Table_Name (
    twitter_id_str VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
    twitter_screen_name VARCHAR(512) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
    .....
  ) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

It may be obvious, but it still was surprising to me, that SET NAMES utf8 is not compatible with utf8mb4 encoding. So for some apps changing table/column encoding was not enough. I had to change encoding in app configuration.

Redmine (ruby, ROR)

In config/database.yml:

production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  username: redmine
  password: passowrd
  encoding: utf8mb4

Custom Yii application (PHP)

In config/db.php:

return [
    'class' => yii\db\Connection::class,
    'dsn' => 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=yii',
    'username' => 'yii',
    'password' => 'password',
    'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
],

If you have utf8mb4 as a column/table encoding and still getting errors like this, make sure that you have configured correct charset for DB connection in your application.

I was finally able to figure out the issue. I had to change some settings in mysql configuration my.ini This article helped a lot http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/mysql-utf8mb4#character-sets

First i changed the character set in my.ini to utf8mb4 Next i ran the following commands in mysql client

SET NAMES utf8mb4; 
ALTER DATABASE dreams_twitter CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_general_ci;

Use the following command to check that the changes are made

SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_name LIKE 'character\_set\_%' OR Variable_name LIKE 'collation%';