Ruby script to convert Rails Latin1 / latin1_swedish_ci database tables to UTF8 / utf8_unicode_ci. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9479607/rails-show-question-marks-for-my-input-utf8-data http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13999026/utf-8-data-in-latin1-database-can-it-be-saved

gistfile1.txt

tables = [] # or ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables
collation = "utf8_unicode_ci"
char_set = "utf8"
db = "your_database_name"
# write out
puts "USE #{db};"
puts "ALTER DATABASE #{db} CHARACTER SET #{char_set} COLLATE #{collation};"
tables.each do |t|
  puts "ALTER TABLE #{t} CHARACTER SET #{char_set} COLLATE #{collation};" # changes for new records
  puts "ALTER TABLE #{t} CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET #{char_set} COLLATE #{collation};" # migrates old records
end