How do you change the default character set of a MySQL table from latin1 to utf8?

Changing the Default Character Set of a MySQL Table

MySQL allows you to specify a default character set for a table when it's created. By default, MySQL uses latin1 as the character set. However, you may need to change this to accommodate data in a different character set, such as utf8.

Problem

Consider the following MySQL table with a default character set of latin1:

<code class="sql">CREATE TABLE `etape_prospection` (
    `etape_prosp_id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `type_prosp_id` int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
    `prosp_id` int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
    `etape_prosp_date` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
    `etape_prosp_comment` text,
    PRIMARY KEY (`etape_prosp_id`),
    KEY `concerne_fk` (`prosp_id`),
    KEY `de_type_fk` (`type_prosp_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=3 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;</code>

You want to change the default character set of this table to utf8.

Solution

To change the default character set of a table and its character columns to a new character set, use the following statement:

<code class="sql">ALTER TABLE tbl_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET charset_name;</code>

In this case, the query would be:

<code class="sql">ALTER TABLE etape_prospection CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;</code>

After executing this statement, the default character set of the etape_prospection table and all of its character columns will be changed to utf8.

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