[TYPO3] typo3 database utf-8 conversion

[Steffen Kamper]

"ries van Twisk" <typo3 at rvt.dds.nl> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:mailman.3823.1200430939.5304.typo3-english at lists.netfielders.de...
>
> On Jan 15, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Steffen Kamper wrote:
>
>>
>>>> <-....snip>
>>>
>>> I guess you will have to "script" that converter on your own,  because 
>>> no
>>> "automatic" converter will work with PHP-serialized array. I haven't
>>> really found the need to do that, in most cases the serialized  arrays 
>>> are
>>> either some "minor" configuration that can be adapted by hand after
>>> converting everything else, or some cached stuff that we can clean up
>>> afterwards anyway. Isn't that the case?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Ernesto
>>
>> i don't think that is needed. As a dump is a normal textfile there  is no
>> difference between text and serialized array, conversion will be  done 
>> for
>> complete text.
>>
>> vg  Steffen
>>
>>
>
> Hey Steffen
>
> the problem is the serialized arrays.
> What happens is that if an character get's changed to a two byte  notation 
> instead
> of a one byte notation the length parameter of the serialized array is 
> incorrect.
>
> The length parameters counts bytes, not characters.
>
> If that happens then unserialize will fail and return false (or was it 
> NULL? )
>
> Ries

Hi Ries,

indeed i didn't thought about that.
But i remember that i took a dump file, changed collation and charset 
manually and restored db, and result was ok.

What's about the extension convert2utf8 - does it works? maybe if not it 
could be improved. Download count is nearly 3000, so it could help.

vg  Steffen