Make MySQL FULLY support utf8 glyphs including smilie faces and emoji.

my.cnf

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

#init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8mb4_unicode_ci'
#init_connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'

# If you have trouble with "ERROR 1071 (42000): Specified key was too long; max key length is ____ bytes"
#innodb-large-prefix=true

#skip-character-set-client-handshake 
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE

mysql_utf8.sql

ALTER DATABASE table_name CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character\_set\_%';

ALTER TABLE table_name MODIFY COLUMN text_name VARCHAR(140) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;


REPAIR TABLE table_name;
OPTIMIZE TABLE table_name;
-- $ mysqlcheck -u root -p --auto-repair --optimize --all-databases

Copy the mysql_utf8.sql file to /etc/mysql/conf.d/utf8.cnf and restart MySQL.

• http://tonyshowoff.com/articles/better-unicode-support-for-mysql-including-emoji/
• http://andy-carter.com/blog/saving-emoticons-unicode-from-twitter-to-a-mysql-database
• https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/mysql-utf8mb4#utf8-to-utf8mb4

Here is a quick, installable version: https://gist.github.com/Xeoncross/2d0503cee10a6374c627f0faaed9ea3f