Rails uniqueness => true encoding issue - ruby-on-rails

Question

Ive run into an issue with rails uniqueness validator when using UTF character in rails 3.0.12 (Ruby 1.8.7).
Here's my little test:
CORRECT:
name = "dave"
count = User.where(:name => name).count
u = User.new(:name => name, :gender => "Male")
puts "Current: #{count} / Valid: #{u.valid?} / Errors: #{u.errors.to_a.to_sentence}"
Output: Current: 1 / Valid: false / Errors: Name is already taken
SQL (0.2ms) SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name` = 'dave'
SQL (0.1ms) SELECT 1 FROM `users` WHERE (`users`.`name` = BINARY 'dave') LIMIT 1
INCORRECT:
name = "angélique"
count = User.where(:name => name).count
u = User.new(:name => name, :gender => "Male")
puts "Current: #{count} / Valid: #{u.valid?} / Errors: #{u.errors.to_a.to_sentence}"
Output: Current: 3 / Valid: true / Errors:
SQL (0.1ms) SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name` = 'angélique'
SQL (0.1ms) SELECT 1 FROM `users` WHERE (`users`.`name` = BINARY 'angélique') LIMIT 1
It seems the where clause uses the correct encoding and finds the result but the check on the presence validator doesn't.
Any ideas how i could resolve this?

Answer 1

I think it's likely that your app is using UTF-8 but that your DB isn't:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#configuration-gotchas
That guide contains examples for doing this for MySQL and PostgreSQL earlier in the page.