I have a mysql database with utf8_general_ci encoding ,
i'm connecting to the same database with php using utf-8 page and file encode and no problem but when connection mysql with C# i have letters like this غزة
i editit the connection string to be like this
server=localhost;password=root;User Id=root;Persist Security Info=True;database=mydatabase;Character Set=utf8
but the same problem .
Setting the charset in the connection string refers to the charset of the queries sent to the server. It does not affect the results returned from the server.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/connectors/en/connector-net-connection-options.html
One way I have found to specify the charset from the client is to run this after opening the connection.
set character_set_results='utf8';
this worked for me:
"datasource=xxx;port=3306;username=xxx;password=xxx;database=xxx;charset=utf8mb4"