MySQL

Here are two ways to return the collation of a table in MySQL.

The quickest way to return the collation of a given table in MySQL is to run the following statement:

SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE '%Artists%';

Running this statement will return a whole bunch of columns that provide information about any matching table/s. One of these columns is called Collation, and it provides the collation of all matching tables.

Of course, you’ll need to replace %Artists% with your own table name. And you can omit the percentage signs if you don’t think they’re needed. This statement also accepts other clauses, such as FROM, WHERE, and IN, so this gives you some options when building your statement.

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In MySQL, collation can be applied at many levels. It can be applied at the server level, the connection level, the database level, the table level, and even at the column level. You can also specify a collation in your queries that will override any collation that has been applied at the database, table, or column levels.

Here’s how to find out what collation is being applied at each of these levels.

Shortcut for Connection, Server, and Database Collation

The quickest way to get collation information for the connection, server, and database is to use the following statement. This statement returns all system variables starting with collation:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';

This returns the collation for the server, connection, and database. Like this:

+----------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value              |
+----------------------+--------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8_general_ci    |
| collation_server     | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
+----------------------+--------------------+

You can also return each of these system variables separately if required. See below for instructions on how to do that.

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Running the following statement lists all collations supported by the server in MySQL:

SHOW COLLATION;

However, the resulting list is quite long, and if you have a collation in mind, you can always filter the list with either the LIKE clause or the WHERE clause.

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