Changing collation for Fabrik 4

[ontarget]

Hi
What collation do you recommend for Fabrik 4 - it seems to be defaulted on latin_swedish
Would utf8mb4_general_ci be ok or better to use as this seems to be the norm in other joomla tables.
I had an issue with validating a utf8mb4_general_ci generated username in a latin_swedish field element in Fabrik:

Incorrect string value: '\xE2\x80\x8B122...' for column 'TCN' at row 1.

TCN field is mapped to the J! username field from the jos_users table

• Is there a general config setting to change collation in Fabrik or does it need to be done on each list (Details > Advanced setting)?
• Should I use Force Query Collation and set it to utf8mb4_general_ci in every list?
• Can i simply change one column in Fabrik table to use utf8mb4_general_ci or do i need to do all of them with alter in phpMyAdmin?
  
• Can this change "break" any settings in Fabrik, I tested on my sandbox and everything "seems" ok!

Thanks for any advice / suggestions

 

[troester]

it seems to be defaulted on latin_swedish

No, it defaults to whatever your database is set to.
So if you have a new installation you should set your database collation to utf8/utf16... directly after creation (before installing Joomla etc) if this is not automatically done by your MySQL server.

I assume you have an old upgraded site? (Pretty old if the J! prefix is jos_)

As far as I know Fabrik does nothing with any collation settings - beside you are using this Advanced setting in list settings.

I assume if you get "Incorrect string value: '\xE2\x80\x8B122...' for column 'TCN' " then it's a username containing characters which are not supported in latin_swedish.

Can this change "break" any settings in Fabrik, I tested on my sandbox and everything "seems" ok!

I don't know. I assume it should be ok, but...