title: MySQL, UTF-8 and Emoji characters
body: <p>I'm working on an iOS app with a PHP+MySQL backend. The app has a chat section, which needs to support emoji.
  My tables are utf8_unicode_ci. If I don't call 'set names utf8' in my scripts, emoji it actually works - whatever is entered in the database, is returned to the clients as it should.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that this (if I understand it correctly) stores special characters incorrectly in the database, and this breaks string comparing (ie ï is no longer the same as i when comparing strings).</p>
  
  <p>However, if I do call set names utf8, suddenly the emoji characters are inserted as a bunch of questionmarks.</p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions on the proper way of handling this? Thanks!</p>