插入MySQL DB时出现字符问题

Question

Having an issue with strange characters showing up when inserting into a database, have tried tirelessly to figure out the issue but I am out of ideas...

Basically if I insert this data like so (this is just testing):

  $valy = "…industry's favorite </em><strong><em>party of the year</em></strong><em>, </em><a href='http://www.unitingagainstlungcancer.org/getinvolved/strolling-supper-with-blues-news'><span class='s1'><em>Joan's…";
  $valy = mysql_real_escape_string($valy);

  $query = "INSERT INTO test_table (data) VALUES ('".$valy."')";
  mysql_query($query,$dbhandle);

this will end up in the database (notice the A characters):

"...industry's favorite party of the year, http://www.unitingagainstlungcancer.org/getinvolved/strolling-supper-with-blues-news'>Joan's..."

I have tried to line up all the character settings:

php default_charset = utf-8
mysql table & row charset = utf-8
Mysql instance variables:
character set client    utf8
(Global value)  latin1  
character set connection    utf8    
(Global value)  latin1  
character set database  latin1  
character set filesystem    binary  
character set results   utf8    
(Global value)  latin1  
character set server    latin1  
character set system    utf8    

What could this issue be?

Answer 1

One thing you may be missing is when you setup the connection. There you should also set the encoding to utf8.

Example:

$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'user', 'password');
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$link);

However, don't use the mysql extension, it's deprecated: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-set-charset.php