when working on symfony project it's common to run symfony doctrine:build-all (update - in V1.4 symfony doctrine:build --all) constantly. but after the command is run, the collation / encoding is changed to something that wasn’t used when the database was created.

eg, the database was created with utf8_general_ci. when the task is run, it’s changed to latin1_swedish_ci.

unlike propel task, when doctrine task is run, database is dropped and re-created. hence system default encoding is used. it seems that you can’t set default collation for database in symfony / doctrine.

i run into this problem when testing out symfony V1.2 and now it’s still happening in V1.3 beta (update - still the same in V1.4).

the problem was reported. this can be fixed by hacking the file 'path/to/symfony/lib/plugins/sfDoctrinePlugin/lib/database/sfDoctrineDatabase.class.php'. go to line 84 and replace:

PHP:

add attributes to 'path/to/project/config/databases.yml':

Code:

run 'symfony doctrine:build-all' again. the tables should be created with the correct encoding.

until this is fixed in the core code, you have to hack this code everytime symfony is upgraded.

without hacking the core code

another way is to add options to all tables defined in config/doctrine/schema.yml:

Code:

the database will be re-created to system default encoding, but the table will use the specified collation.

the cons: tables created by plugins still use system default. individual schema.yml has to be hacked, and you have to remember to do this everytime the plugin is upgraded.

update: a even better solution

imo, this is a better solution.