How to set up php + mariadb encoding properly?

Question

PHP

Good afternoon. I set up a connection to the database via php (the last three lines are experiments with stackoverflow that do not help)

function __construct($host=HOST,$user=USER,$pass=PASS,$db=DATABASE){
     $this->conn = new mysqli($host, $user, $pass, $db);
     $this->conn->set_charset('utf8');
     //$this->conn->query('SET NAMES utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci');
     //$this->conn->query('SET character_set_results utf8');
     //$this->conn->query("SET SESSION collation_connection = 'utf8_general_ci'");
       }

When querying the database, it returns Russian text in the form of question marks. Base settings are as recommended (SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%'):

Variable_name        Value
character_set_client        utf8mb4
character_set_connection        utf8mb4
character_set_database        utf8mb4
character_set_filesystem        binary
character_set_results        utf8mb4
character_set_server        latin1
character_set_system        utf8
character_sets_dir             /usr/share/mysql/charsets/

When such a problem appeared on the local machine, I uncommented the directives in the mysql (my.ini) settings to work with s utf8,

## UTF 8 Settings
init-connect=\'SET NAMES utf8\'
collation_server=utf8_unicode_ci
character_set_server=utf8
skip-character-set-client-handshake
character_sets-dir="C:/xampp/mysql/share/charsets"

changed character_set_server to utf8 and everything fixed. Since there is no access to this file on the hosting, and I can’t change the server setting (the hoster’s TP says that character_set_database is a priority and everything is ok in their part), I reached a dead end.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Actually, you need to execute the correct CREATE DATABASE
AND CREATE TABLE
With the charset you need.

Answer 2

If the text is displayed normally in the database itself (in phpmyadmin), then try
$this->conn->query('SET NAMES "utf8"');
instead of commented lines.