Script to convert a a database to use utf8 encoding

mysql-convert-utf8.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
import MySQLdb

host = "localhost"
passwd = ""
user = "root"
dbname = "mydbname"

db = MySQLdb.connect(host=host, user=user, passwd=passwd, db=dbname)
cursor = db.cursor()

cursor.execute("ALTER DATABASE `%s` CHARACTER SET 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci'" % dbname)

sql = "SELECT DISTINCT(table_name) FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_schema = '%s'" % dbname
cursor.execute(sql)

results = cursor.fetchall()
for row in results:
    sql = "ALTER TABLE `%s` convert to character set DEFAULT COLLATE DEFAULT" % (row[0])
    cursor.execute(sql)
db.close()

Hello Sorin,
when executing your conversion script I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "utf8.py", line 20, in
cursor.execute(sql)
File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 174, in execute
self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 36, in defaulterrorhandler
raise errorclass, errorvalue
_mysql_exceptions.IntegrityError: (1062, "Duplicate entry 'ich hasse meine mitsch\xc3\xbcler' for key 'idx_keyword_unq'")

At this point the script stops and all the remaining tables don't get converted. Also, where ever my content data has an umlaut (e.g. ö,ä,ü) a black diamond with a white question mark is being displayed.

Thanks, it fixed my problem.

great script thanks :)