These MySQL commands might get handy when having problems with character encoding:
mysqldump --opt --default-character-set=latin1 --set-charset=latin1 --skip-add-drop-table -hlocalhost -ubenutzername -p"passwort" datenbank --tables tabellenname > tabellenname_dump.sql
mysqldump -h localhost -u root dbname | replace CHARSET=latin1 CHARSET=utf8 | iconv -f latin1 -t utf8 > dbdump_utf8.sql
mysqldump --default-character-set=latin1 --set-charset=latin1 -hlocalhost -ubenutzername dbname > dbdump_latin1.sql
When using MySQL with PHP, the function
mysql_set_charset should generally be used after establishing a database connection. E.g.:
$mysql1 = mysql_connect("localhost","user","passwd");
$mysql2 = mysql_select_db("dbname");
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$mysql1);
(already deprecated as of MySQLi)