Store Emoji in Mysql on Rails

emoji_mysql.md

I recently came accross this error while working on a rails app

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid (Mysql2::Error: Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x84' for column ...

A bit search shows that this error is famously known. You can see more details from here and here.

In short, this error happens because Mysql uses 3 bytes for utf8 character by default. So when a 4-byte character is sent, it crashes.

Solution: use encoding utf8mb4 and collation utf8mb4_unicode_ci

  adapter: mysql2
  encoding: utf8mb4
  collation: utf8mb4_unicode_ci

If you can, stay away from mysql and use postgresql...