[SOLVED] text fields change to ?? when opened in CB -> user management -> edit

Multiple language site, Japanese and English, English default language. Database collation utf8mb4_unicode_ci Users have created accounts with Japanese characters for names and other text fields that are successfully stored and displayed in user management. When account opened for editing in administrator side text fields that have characters are changed to ? for each character. If characters are entered on the admin edit and saved they will not be changed to ? when reopened for editing on the admin side.

Don't see how it'd matter what location you're at since backend edit and frontend edit generates and outputs the fields using the exact same API from the same database table. Seams to work fine on our demo site below.

demo.cbdemosites.com/

Are you using a custom backend template? If so maybe the utf8 charset metadata is missing in the head element. If you are using a custom backend template try switching back to default Joomla.

I am using the Isis template.

Looking at page source for the edit user page shows <meta charset="utf-8" /> in the head.

I created a user on the demo.cbdemosites.com/ site with first name 横井 last name 秀明 and it opened correctly for editing on the admin side, so you are correct that it works fine on the demo site.

I have cleared browser and site caches and it still happens, using either Chrome or Safari on Mac OS.

I have run the database checks in tools and did some repairs but editing a user still results in loss of the Japanese characters.

It seems to be a problem with retrieving the data from the database on edit, as it is displayed correctly in the overview of users, and Japanese characters can be stored in the database on user edit, I guess this is the API you refer to.

It also seems to be a community builder problem as I am able to load the Japanese characters in the Joomla Users edit page for users who have existing Japanese names.

Any suggestions on what to investigate to resolve this will be most appreciated.

Is it only the name fields causing this issue or is it any field? Are you sure the collation for your tables and columns are set correctly? In phpmyadmin navigate to _comprofiler table and ensure firstname, middlename, and lastname columns have the correct collation. Joomla uses its own name column in _users in Joomla user edit and CB only uses that if using single name input.

Always best to go to the data - I inspected one of the records giving me trouble and found that the data was stored as ?? I recently updated the collations for the database and the users with ?? registered before that.

My confusion arose from the CB User Management page listing users, which evidently gets the first column "Name" from the Joomla users table, not from the comprofiler table fields firstname, middlename, lastname, which is how I have the CB name configured. The Joomla users table was configured with the utf8mb4_unicode_ci so it has the correct data, which is displayed on both Joomla user edit and the CB user list, but not on the CB user edit.

Fortunately there are not too many users who registered before I got the collation of comprofiler correct.

Thanks for your help in solving this.