Alter the encoding type of all text-like columns in a MySQL database from anything to UTF8 but without touching the bytes itself. Don't ask.

mysql-anything-to-utf8.php

<?php
        $sql = '';
        $pdo = Propel::getConnection();

        $stmt = $pdo->query('SHOW FULL TABLES');
        $tables = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_NUM);

        foreach($tables as $tbl) {
            $tblName = $tbl[0];

            if('BASE TABLE' !== $tbl[1]) {
                continue;
            }

            $columns = $pdo->query("DESCRIBE `$tblName`")->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

            $partBinary = array();
            $partUtf8 = array();

            foreach($columns as $col) {

                $colName = $col['Field'];
                $colType = $col['Type'];

                if(preg_match('/^(TEXT|VARCHAR|CHAR).*/i', $colType)) {
                    $partBinary[] = "MODIFY `$colName` $colType CHARACTER SET binary";
                    $partUtf8[] = "MODIFY `$colName` $colType CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci";
                }
            }

            if(count($partBinary)) {
                $sql .= "ALTER TABLE `$tblName` " .PHP_EOL . "\t" . join(', ' . PHP_EOL . "\t" , $partBinary) . PHP_EOL . ';'. PHP_EOL. PHP_EOL;
                $sql .= "ALTER TABLE `$tblName` " .PHP_EOL . "\t" . join(', ' . PHP_EOL . "\t" , $partUtf8) . PHP_EOL . ';'. PHP_EOL. PHP_EOL;
            }
        }

        echo $sql;