mysql encoding encrypted text - mysql

Question

I'm currently attempting to switch from my shared inmotionhosting account (have received AWEFUL service lately) to an Amazon EC2 server that I've set up. I'm having trouble with getting the encryption function working in the EC2 account.
In my PHP code, all text gets encrypted by mcrypt before being put into the SQL. I have deduced that those mcrypt characters are responsible for all my queries throwing errors. (I know it's because of encoding issues, but Google searches on the subject aren't very clear on where I need to focus my attention.)
A more simplified way of explaining the problem. On my new hosting account this SQL query doesn't work:
UPDATE mydatabase.clients SET firstname='\'å».”é¶Q' WHERE id_client=65
But this does
UPDATE mydatabase.clients SET firstname='Test' WHERE id_client=65
So that tells me the mcrypt function is using characters that the SQL database doesn't understand and thus the queries aren't working.
Some other info for you...
When I run "SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_%'" on the working database I get this:
Variable_name Value
character_set_client utf8
character_set_connection utf8
character_set_database latin1
character_set_filesystem binary
character_set_results utf8
character_set_server latin1
character_set_system utf8
When I do that on the nonworking database I get:
Variable_name Value
character_set_client utf8
character_set_connection utf8
character_set_database utf8
character_set_filesystem binary
character_set_results utf8
character_set_server utf8
character_set_system utf8
I saw the difference in character_set_database and ran this line of code:
ALTER DATABASE mydatabase DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1
It successfully changed the character_set_database to "latin1" to match the other, but didn't solve the problem.
Finally, all my columns in my tables are using the Collation "latin1_swedish_ci"
Any help you could give would be very very appreciated!

Answer 1

Store your encrypted strings as binary (or a similar) type. Also make sure you are escaping the encrypted string. Both are important parts to doing this right!
I've been working with MySQL and Mcrypt and I store my encrypted data and initialization vectors as binary and I escape all of these strings before they get put in a query. Works like a charm.