small SSI modification (encoding and database)

[BogdanNB]

Hi All!

I propose to do a centralized modification/revision of the SSI.php file... it is a very small change (addon) concerning DB connection.

In few words about my problem:
I use SSI.php for users authorization on my site and other functions and features of SSI... but mostly I use a database connection that is created in SSI.php and inner SMF method - db_query() - for direct work with DB data...
I use UTF-8 version of SMF (with russian language pack) and all my scripts are in the UTF-8... everything was fine while I worked with the english content of the forum, .. but when I sent a database query containing russian characters (russian board name - smf_boards.name field):

...
$request = db_query("
      SELECT hxxp:b.id [nonactive]_BOARD
      FROM {$db_prefix}boards AS b
      WHERE hxxp:b.id [nonactive]_CAT = $category_ID AND hxxp:b.name [nonactive] = '$board_name'", __FILE__, __LINE__);
...

I've faced problem with string/query encoding (collation problems) - attempt to compare UTF-8 field value with cp1251 string value... at that time while all my files/scripts saved in UTF-8.
To solve this problem, I used the standard directive, which I use since switching to UTF-8 - I've added only one query in the SSI.php (in bold below):

...
// Connect to the MySQL database.
if (empty($db_persist))
   $db_connection = @mysql_connect($db_server, $db_user, $db_passwd);
else
   $db_connection = @mysql_pconnect($db_server, $db_user, $db_passwd);
if ($db_connection === false)
   return false;

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_general_ci'", $db_connection);

// Add the database onto the prefix to avoid conflicts with other scripts.
if (strpos($db_prefix, '.') === false)
   $db_prefix = is_numeric(substr($db_prefix, 0, 1)) ? $db_name . '.' . $db_prefix : '`' . $db_name . '`.' . $db_prefix;
else
   @mysql_select_db($db_name, $db_connection);
...

So... maybe it makes sense to do a centralized review of the SSI.php - include similar modification for the SSI functional for different cases (encodings)?

Thanks a lot for your great work!
Bogdan.