Character issues on upgrading OJS 2.4.8-4 to 3.3.0-13

Software Support
4

Hi @Ppantaleo

First of all, make a backup of your database and double-check that it’s working.
Dump the database, open it on VIM and proceed with the following:

  1. Make sure it runs on InnoDB:
    :%s/ENGINE=MyISAM/ENGINE=InnoDB/gc

  2. Make sure the charset is really utf-8:
    :%s/CHARSET=latin1/CHARSET=utf8/gc

The commands above will make the necessary changes.

  1. Change the collation on all tables to utf8_general_ci:
    perl -pi -e 's{latin1_swedish_ci}{utf8_general_ci}g' your_db_dump.sql

If you can, run the database through ftfy (https://ftfy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

  1. Make sure your config.inc.php file has database collation set to utf8_general_ci.

At this point, your database is probably in good shape and characters issues gone, import it and you’re done. (Don’t forget to drop all tables from your database before importing the fixed one, otherwise the import will not work).

Best regards,

Josh Noronha (he, him, his)
Systems Administrator
PKP|PS Support Team