Title: MySQL collation type
Last modified: August 31, 2016

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# MySQL collation type

 *  Resolved [sillinguist](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sillinguist/)
 * (@sillinguist)
 * [10 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mysql-collation-type-1/)
 * Greetings,
    I was recently looking at my database and noticed that your plugin
   does not produce tables with the same collation character set as the current 
   version of wordpress.
 * I was particularly looking at the table `wp_dynamic_widgets`. It is in a charset
   labeled `utf8_unicode_ci`. My understanding is that the current version of wordpress
   uses `utf8mb4_unicode_ci`. I was recently reading the core announcement here:
   [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/04/02/the-utf8mb4-upgrade/](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/04/02/the-utf8mb4-upgrade/)
   and watching [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQaRUEwEKxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQaRUEwEKxE).
 * So here is my question: _because your table is not using the same collation as
   WP Core, does that mean that by using your plugin it it opens up a website to
   security vulnerabilities, of the same type as WP Core had before it was able 
   to handle 4 byte unicode characters?_
 * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/dynamic-widgets/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/dynamic-widgets/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Contributor [Qurl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/qurl/)
 * (@qurl)
 * [10 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mysql-collation-type-1/#post-7105979)
 * I haven’t viewed the whole YouTube video. But I guess when there is an emoji 
   injected into an utf8 database table, there is a security flaw. Well, DW does
   not use names in general, only for the widget identifier which is generated by
   WordPress. All other necessary information is referenced by the ID number.
 *  Thread Starter [sillinguist](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sillinguist/)
 * (@sillinguist)
 * [10 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mysql-collation-type-1/#post-7106040)
 * It is not just emoji, it is any multi-tier (4 byte) character, and I presume 
   any malformed 3 byte character.
 *  Plugin Contributor [Qurl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/qurl/)
 * (@qurl)
 * [10 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mysql-collation-type-1/#post-7106045)
 * Still, WordPress generates the names.
 * As not all db version can use utf8mb4 I really don’t see an urgent issue. Frankly,
   I come across many old version of MySQL that doesn’t support utf8mb4 almost daily
   at clients. WordPress (still) supports that and I’m sure it does that in a secure
   way.
 * I agree DW should also support the utf8mb4 and I guess it will in the future.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘MySQL collation type’ is closed to new replies.

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## Tags

 * [MySQL](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/mysql/)
 * [unicode](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/unicode/)
 * [utf8](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/utf8/)
 * [utf8mb4](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/utf8mb4/)

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Qurl](https://wordpress.org/support/users/qurl/)
 * Last activity: [10 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mysql-collation-type-1/#post-7106045)
 * Status: resolved