Choose utf8 character set and utf8_general_ci
collation.
Obviously, Collation of the field (to which you want to store Hindi text) should be utf8_general_ci
.
To alter your table field, run
ALTER TABLE `<table_name>` CHANGE `<field_name>` `<field_name>` VARCHAR(100)
CHARSET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci DEFAULT '' NOT NULL;
Once you've connected to database, run the following statement at first
mysql_set_charset('utf8');
Eg:
//setting character set
mysql_set_charset('utf8');
//insert Hindi text
mysql_query("INSERT INTO ....");
To retrieve data
//setting character set
mysql_set_charset('utf8');
//select Hindi text
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM ....");
Before you printing any unicode text (say Hindi text) on browser, you should have to set content type of that page by adding a meta tag
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
Eg:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Example Unicode</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php echo $hindiText; ?>
</body>
</html>
Update:
mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8") has changed to
mysql_set_charset('utf8');
This is the preferred way to change the charset. Using mysql_query() to set it (such as SET NAMES utf8) is not recommended. See http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-set-charset.php*