Character encoding in R MySQL on Linux machine - sql

Question

I'm trying to fetch data which includes some German word with umlaut characters. following the bellow structure everything is fine in windows machine :
Sys.setlocale('LC_ALL','C')
library(RMySQL)
conn <- dbConnect(MySQL(), user = "user", dbname = "database",
host = "host", password = "pass")
sql.query <- paste0("some query")
df <- dbSendQuery(conn, sql.query)
names <- fetch(df, -1)
dbDisconnect(conn)
As an example I have :
names[1230]
[1] "Strübbel"
What should I change in order to get the same result in Linux Ubuntu ?
the query will run without problem, but the result is :
names[1230]
[1] "Str\374bbel"
I have checked This solution, but when I put the 'set character set "utf8"' inside of query I'm getting the following error :
df <- dbSendQuery(conn, sql.query, 'set character set "utf8"')
names <- fetch(df, -1)
Error in .local(conn, statement, ...) :
unused argument ("set character set \"utf8\"")
I should mention the encoding for the result is unknown :
Encoding(names[1230])
[1] "unknown"
and doing the :
Encoding(names[1230]) <- "UTF-8"
names[1230]
[1] "Str<fc>bbel"
does not solve the problem !

Answer 1

Instead of :
Sys.setlocale('LC_ALL','C')
You have to use :
Sys.setlocale('LC_ALL','en_US.UTF-8')
and in the sql query :
library(RMySQL)
conn <- dbConnect(MySQL(), user = "user", dbname = "database",
host = "host", password = "pass")
sql.query <- paste0("some query")
dbSendQuery(conn,'set character set "utf8"')
df <- dbSendQuery(conn, sql.query)
names <- fetch(df, -1)
dbDisconnect(conn)

Answer 2

Not sure if this solution will help you but you could try such approach:
con <- dbConnect(MySQL(), user = "user", dbname = "database",
host = "host", password = "pass", encoding = "ISO-8859-1")
If this encoding doesn't work then try "brute force" with different variants