How to display Urdu Unicode characters on my Windows Forms

[shahhussain305]

Hay, I tried to get the Urdu Fonts from MySql Database using C# in Visual Studio 2010 in Windows Forms Application. When I get the value from table into my variable it shows the characters in ???? symbols. wherein PHP it is working very good without any problem.
But in PHP i have used the following code:

<?php 
	class CRUD {
		var $con; 
		//function to make connection to database
		function connect(){
			$this->con = mysql_connect("localhost","root","password") or die(mysql_error());			
			[B]mysql_query("SET character_set_results=utf8", $this->con);
			mb_language('uni');
			mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
			mysql_select_db("database1",$this->con);
			mysql_query("set names 'utf8'",$this->con);[/B]				
			}
                //function to get the field value from the table specified in the query
		function getValue($sql,$value){
			$this->connect();
			$result = mysql_query($sql,$this->con);
			if(mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
				$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
					$value = $row[$value];
				}
			else {
					$value = "";
				}
				return $value;
			}
                    ?>

Now I do not know how to insert this line of code to my query in C#:

mysql_query("SET character_set_results=utf8", $this->con);
			mb_language('uni');
			mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
			mysql_select_db("database1",$this->con);
			mysql_query("set names 'utf8'",$this->con);

I am using the following code in my C# class:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.Sql;
using System.Data.Odbc;
using System.Data;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Madrasa_Mgt.classes
{
    class CRUD
    {
        private static string userid;
        private static string userkey;
        private OdbcConnection con;
        private OdbcDataReader odr;
        private OdbcCommand cmd;
        public bool flag;
        UTF8Encoding utf8 = new UTF8Encoding();


        public CRUD() {
            //connectToDb();
            setVars();
            
        }
        
    private OdbcConnection connectToDb(){
        try {
            con = new OdbcConnection("Driver={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver}; uid=root; password=thefire; Server=localhost; Option=16834; Database=madrasa_jamia");
            if (con.State == ConnectionState.Closed) {
                con.Open();
            }
        }
        catch (Exception exc) {
            this.msgErrorEx(exc);   
        }
        return con;
    }

    private void setVars() {
        try {
            this.connectToDb();
            string sql = "SELECT mad_name,mad_addr,phone,banner_photo,owner_name,licence_number,purchase_date,vendor_name,vendor_addr,vendor_phone,is_ok FROM configuration";
            cmd = new OdbcCommand(sql, this.con);
            cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
            odr = cmd.ExecuteReader();
            if (odr.Read())
            {
               GlobalVars.MadName = odr["mad_name"];
               GlobalVars.MadrasaAddress = odr["mad_addr"];
               GlobalVars.Phone = odr["phone"];
               GlobalVars.Banner = odr["banner_photo"];
               GlobalVars.OwnerName = odr["owner_name"];
               GlobalVars.LicenseNumber = odr["licence_number"];
               GlobalVars.PurchasedDate = odr["purchase_date"];
               GlobalVars.VendorName = odr["vendor_name"];
               GlobalVars.VendorAddress = odr["vendor_addr"];
               GlobalVars.VendorPhone = odr["vendor_phone"];
               GlobalVars.IsOk = odr["is_ok"];
            }
        }
        catch (Exception exc) { 
        }
    }

and I am getting the following error message:
class System.String
Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.
Error:
Cannot implicitly convert type 'object' to 'string'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)

Please help me in this regards. Thanks in advance.
Shah Hussain

[Aimee Bailey]

I just came across your question, and realised I had a bookmark that may be really relevant here:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/Unicode.html

It's an old article, but hopefully it'll prove of some use to you. All the best!

Aimee.

[ariful alam]

You are showing your data from MySql to any text box or control of your Visul Studio 2010 windows application. the controls font are a ASCII font by default. try by changing those controls font to a Unicode font. It may work.

Hope it's help you. :)

[shahhussain305]

hay, Ariful Alam and Aimee bailey first of all let me say you thanks for reply. but before going forth, let me say that i have resolved by updating my installed driver for MySQL, actually i was using MySQL driver version 3.x which was not support to send and or retrieve data as in Unicode format from MySQL databse. when i update MySQL driver and then run the application it works nicely and now its working without any problem.
Thanks and regard.
Shah Hussain