Less than or equal symbol dissapears with Connector/J

[Rob Frampton]

Hi,

I know the topic of the handling of Unicode in Connector/J has come up several times before, but none of the solutions suggested seem to solve it, although I'm sure it is a Unicode problem.

My Java app is trying to store a Less Than or Equal To symbol, which is part of UTF-8 (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2264/index.htm), however it always inserts a ? in place of the symbol once in the database. I can paste it into the mysql CLI client and it works fine. If I use the following JDBC connect string:

?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8&characterSetResults=UTF-8

I actually get an exception when inserting:

Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect string value: '\xE2\x89\xA4 5 ...' for column 'Description' at row 1
at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1055)
at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:956)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3536)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3468)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:1957)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2107)
at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2648)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeInternal(PreparedStatement.java:2086)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2371)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2289)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2274)
at com.mysql.jdbc.UpdatableResultSet.insertRow(UpdatableResultSet.java:857)
at...
Caused by:
java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect string value: '\xE2\x89\xA4 5 ...' for column 'Description' at row 1
at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1055)
at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:956)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3536)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3468)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:1957)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2107)
at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2648)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeInternal(PreparedStatement.java:2086)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2371)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2289)
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeUpdate(PreparedStatement.java:2274)
at com.mysql.jdbc.UpdatableResultSet.insertRow(UpdatableResultSet.java:857)
at...

Yet as far as I can see, \xE2\x89\xA4 is perfectly valid UTF-8. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Many thanks.