Adding and Retrieving special characters to/from MySql using C#

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Hi everyone!

Ok, so I have the following problem. I have a Winform with a dropdown list displaying every currency code in the world and if a user selects it the symbol displays next to the box. The symbols is a special character for most of the currencies. When displaying the currency next to the box there is no problem as it is a hard coded string. However, from this list the user will select his country currency and the currency code and the symbol is saved to the database. When I look at the database some of the special character currencies are saved as "?".... Throughout the rest of the application the symbol is not hard coded as it should retrieve the symbol from the database, but now when it should show [Symbol]100 .... it shows ?100 for example.

How do I save the symbol so it would be retrieved the way it should?

Hope you understand the question and know how to fix this!

Regards,
Chris

Posted 22-Feb-14 1:34am

Christopher Smit

Add a Solution

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2014-02-22T01:54:00

Solution 1

The first thing to check is the column format you are storing the symbol into - it should be NVARCHAR not VARCHAR as the former is Unicode and the latter is not (assuming you have MySQL 5 or above)

Then, there is the transfer of data into the column: if you are concatenating strings to form your SQL statement then you need to prefix the string constant with "N" to indicate that it is already National Character Set data:

SQL

INSERT INTO MyTable (currency) VALUES (N'£')

If you do it via parameterized queries (as you definitely should be anyway to avoid SQL Injection Attacks) then that is handled by the system automatically.

Reading out should be no problem: once you have got it in it should "just work"

Posted 22-Feb-14 1:54am

OriginalGriff

Comments

Christopher Smit 22-Feb-14 7:59am

I cannot find NVARCHAR... I'm using MySQL Workbench 6.0

OriginalGriff 22-Feb-14 8:18am

Yes, but what version of MySql is behind that?

Christopher Smit 24-Feb-14 14:37pm

Sorry for late reply... Build 6.0.7.11215

Do you know if there is an alternative to NVARCHAR in some versions?

OriginalGriff 24-Feb-14 14:46pm

Build 6.0.7.11215 is teh SQL Wrokbench version, not the MySql DB Engine version.

Try
VARCHAR(n) CHARSET utf8

Christopher Smit 24-Feb-14 14:53pm

I am able to set the CHARSET to utf8, I cannot type VARCHAR(n) at all. Where do I get the DB Engine version and what is the difference?

OriginalGriff 24-Feb-14 14:58pm

Um. The "n" is the maximum size? :laugh:

Christopher Smit 24-Feb-14 15:02pm

Hahaha wow... That's embarrassing... Anyhow, it still won't work.. :( I have the charset set to utf-8 and VARCHAR(5)....