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Emoji in Texts

Osclass 8.3 supports Emoji in textual fields, however for existing installation there may be action required on site owners. As it's not possible to automatically convert some tables charset to utf8mb4 due to foreign keys, it's manual process left to site owners.

Procedure to convert tables

1. List of tables

  • oc_t_locale
  • oc_t_user_description
  • oc_t_pages_description
  • oc_t_category_description
  • oc_t_keywords (optional)
  • oc_t_preferece (optional)

2. Drop indexes

In first step, drop indexes on fk_c_locale_code column that would block conversion. It's ideal to store index definition so you can recreate it after.

3. Change tables charset to utf8mb4

Now it's time to update tables so they support emoji.

ALTER TABLE oc_t_locale CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE oc_t_pages_description CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE oc_t_category_description CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE oc_t_user_description CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE oc_t_keywords CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE oc_t_preference CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

4. Create indexes to locale table

All is completed, now just add back indexes. Sample index definition:

ALTER TABLE oc_t_pages_description ADD INDEX fk_c_locale_code (fk_c_locale_code) USING BTREE;

Summary

You have now converted tables into utf8mb4 charset that supports emoji.

Note that when you will convert locale table, you might get more tables/indexes complaining. You will need to drop all of them and then recreate.

Also note there should be no serious harm not to create indexes back.