spring data jpa utf-8 encoding not working : <p>I use <code>spring-data-jpa</code> and <code>mysql</code> database. My tables character set is utf-8. Also I added <code>?useUnicode=yes&amp;amp;characterEncoding=utf8</code> to mysql url in application.properties file. Problem when I pass characters like "ąčęėį" to controller to save it in mysql. In mysql I got ??? marks. But when I use mysql console example <code>update projects_data set data="ąęąčę" where id = 1;</code> every works well.</p>

<p>application.properties:</p>

<pre><code># "root" as username and password.
spring.datasource.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/gehive?useUnicode=yes&amp;amp;characterEncoding=utf8
spring.datasource.username = gehive
spring.datasource.password = pass

spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

# Keep the connection alive if idle for a long time (needed in production)
spring.datasource.testWhileIdle = true
spring.datasource.validationQuery = SELECT 1

# Show or not log for each sql query
spring.jpa.show-sql = true

# Hibernate ddl auto (create, create-drop, update)
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto = update

# Naming strategy
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming-strategy = org.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy


# Use spring.jpa.properties.* for Hibernate native properties (the prefix is
# stripped before adding them to the entity manager)

# The SQL dialect makes Hibernate generate better SQL for the chosen database
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect
</code></pre>

<p>tables:</p>

<pre><code>+---------------+--------------------+
| TABLE_NAME    | character_set_name |
+---------------+--------------------+           
| customer      | utf8               |
| projects      | utf8               |
| projects_data | utf8               |
+---------------+--------------------+
</code></pre>
