---
title: "Rails + MySQL: Case-Sensitive strings in your database"
kind: article
slug: rails-mysql-case-sensitive-strings-in-your-database
created_at: 2009-09-03
tags:
  - Ruby on Rails
---
When using Rails + MySQL, you'll find that normal string (or varchar(255)) fields are case insensitive. This can be quite a nuisance, but it's easy to resolve. You need to set your table to the utf8_bin collation. By using the binary variant, you're basically enabling case sensitivity.

    :::ruby
    create_table :posts, :options => 'ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin' do |t|
      t.string :title, :limit => 100
    end

That's all. The <code>title</code> field is now case sensitive.

Another question I get a lot is how to change the collation and charset for an existing column. That's easy with the following query. Just make sure to pick the right column and data type:

    :::sql
		ALTER TABLE posts MODIFY `title` varchar(100) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;