Displaying "non-English" characters using PHP & MySQL

Many times we intend to display "non-English" characters say Hindi language on the web-page using PHP & MySQL. Here's the trick:

1. Set column, table & database collation to "utf8_unicode_ci". You can use PHPMyAdmin for that purpose.

2. Use following meta tag in the php page:

meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"

3. And while establishing connection with the database make sure you do the following:
$chs1="SET NAMES utf8";
myquery($chs1);

$chs2="SET CHARACTER SET utf8";
myquery($chs2);

function myquery($var) {
$rval=mysql_query($var);
return $rval;
}

Resource:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset.html
http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,235410.msg1095028.html#msg1095028

Important commands:
mysql> show character set;
mysql> show collation ;
mysql> show global variables;

MySQL script to create & drop databases !!!

#===============================================================================
# FILE: alter_dbs.sql
# DESCRIPTION: To drop and recreate the databases
# AUTHOR: Parag Kalra (), paragkalra@gmail.com, www.paragkalra.com
# CREATED: Sunday 18 January 2009 07:00:29 IST IST
#===============================================================================


#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Dropping the databases if they exists
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS `some_database `;

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Creating databases
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CREATE DATABASE `some_database `;

MySQL Error 2003 - Can't connect MySQL on'IP Address'

1. Try to telnet the remote mysql server.
e.g. telnet 192.168.1.2 3306 (Windows)
e.g. telnet 192.168.1.2 3306 (Linux)
2. If not being able to telnet, check the config file of mysql (my.cnf). "bind-address" parameter should be set to ip address and not to localhost.
3. Restart the mysql service.
4. Now you should be able to telnet and also connect to the mysql server remotely.

Resources used:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-enable-remote-access-to-mysql-database-server.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=687294