How to Store Emojis in MySQL from iPhone Apps: Why Do I See Blank Values?

Using Emojis in MySQL with iPhone Apps: Resolving the Blank Value Issue

In developing iPhone applications that transfer emojis to MySQL databases, users may encounter situations where inserted emoji values appear as blank. This occurs when the database's character set is not set to support Unicode code points beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).

Emoji characters often use code points above the BMP, such as ? (SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES), which resides at U 1F604. Prior to version 5.5, MySQL supported UTF-8 only for the BMP, meaning it could not handle characters like U 1F604. To overcome this limitation, use MySQL 5.5 and select an appropriate character set such as utf8mb4, utf16, or utf32, which support full UTF-8 encoding and can accommodate extended code point characters.

Ensure that the connection encoding between PHP and MySQL also uses the same character set. If you are using MySQL versions prior to 5.5, resort to using BLOB column types, which store raw bytes without identifying specific characters. While this approach allows for storage, it compromises efficient text searching and indexing capabilities.

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