devot:eeDevoted to ExpressionEngine

Hi, we’re using Backup Pro (ish) and want to upgrade to the full version, but the backups don’t store Arabic characters which are held in both entries and third-party tables (e.g. multi-language module, Low Variables, Matrix).

The characters are written out to file as “?????” (no this isn’t an issue with the editor I’m using to view it).

When the database is backed up via command line the arabic characters are stored correctly.

Probably similar to this issue which is marked as resolved but no resolution:
http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/support/backup-pro/viewthread/2785/

Can you confirm if this is an issue with the full version of the add-on too?

(Thank you for the great add-on)

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you on this; I didn’t get the notification for some reason so missed it completely.

Honestly, I’m not really sure. I would imagine it would, and have yet to hear that it’s not, but encoding can be tricky. Can you post an example of the text you’re trying to backup so I can run a couple tests?

BTW, the referenced issue was caused on the users side so there wasn’t much to do within Backup Pro(ish).

Thanks,
Eric

Here’s some Arabic text:

.اضغط هنا لإضافة المزيد من المنتجات إلى هذا التصميم

In case this text area field is encoded and the characters converted, I’ve attached the multi-language table as an SQL dump - obviously you don’t need the module installed, but using the table will make it easier to test/replicate.

Many thanks for taking the time to look into this.

Peter

exp_multi_language.sql.zip  (File Size: 14KB - Downloads: 87)

Any update on this issue? Because I have the same problem.

We’ve got the same problem but with Chinese. Sounds like exporting the SQL data with UTF-8 encoding can fix this though. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

We have also been experiencing a similar problem with Japanese. My guess is that Backup Pro is not taking the character encoding into account when backing up the SQL. I don’t know quite how this add-on handles that part of the process, but if it is using mysqldump, for example, adding —default-character-set=utf8 to the command (as shown below) would presumably help avoid character corruption in cases like this.

Also, for those of you who have encountered this, do you know what the encoding for your MySQL database is? Ideally, you would like it to be UTF-8, but in many cases it might be something else, like Latin1, depending on how it was set up initially.

Just adding to this as we have also just discovered (to considerable dismay) that our Arabic pages are not being backed up properly. I’ve checked and our whole database is collated with UTF8_general_ci

Interestingly it seemed to be titles and navigation items (many of which held in NavEE fields) that weren’t stored, whereas content in Wygwam fields was alright. Evidently this is because Wygwam (or some EE hook, it’s not clear) converts non-Latin characters to ASCII codes.

Very keen to find a solution to this - we love Backup Pro but we run a large number of Arabic pages and at the moment it looks like we’ll have to switch to something else. Surely this would be a fairly easy modification? A dump made from phpMyAdmin (which is what we’re using in the interim) collects all Arabic content without issue.

Anyone who is experiencing this issue please contact me ASAP. I have a new build that should resolve this for everyone.

Thanks,
Eric
eric at mithra62 dot com

Hi mithra62

U means the latest release is support for foreign language already?

I am planning to buy one but afraid my main language will not support by back up pro.

If you confirmed that the latest one is workable , I love to buy one with Automatee

thks in advance

Yup though, to be fair. Backup Pro(ish) has the new database backup engine too so there’s no real need to upgrade if all you’re looking to do is handle the Arabic characters.

Eric

Which release fixes this? I was running 1.8.6 and was having the same issue, I upgraded to the latest version but that one doesn’t work at all.

1.9.X is where the new database backup engine was released.