In case you want to store special characters inside of MySQL table field, you need to change the table encoding like below:

ALTER TABLE YOUR_TABLE CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

#database #mysql #charset #character_set #collate #utf8 #utf8_unicode_ci #alter

Turn MySQL table into utf8mb4 to store emojis:

ALTER TABLE YOUR_TABLE convert to character set utf8mb4 collate utf8mb4_general_ci;

Moreover you also need to change column character set:

ALTER TABLE YOUR_TABLE CHANGE YOUR_COLUMN_NAME YOUR_COLUMN_NAME  VARCHAR(250) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;

Be careful that now you have to do more things like set character set after connection initiation in Python:

your_mysql_client = MySQLdb.connect(...)
 your_mysql_client.set_character_set('utf8mb4')

Now before executing your query you also need to set character set on cursor:

my_cursor.execute("SET NAMES utf8mb4;")
 my_cursor.execute(YOUR_QUERY)

#database #mysql #character_set #utf8mb4 #cursor #emoji