PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION, PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE => PDO::FETCH_ASSOC, PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES => false, ]; self::$pdo = new PDO($dsn, $user, $pass, $options); // Explicitly set UTF-8 encoding for connection self::$pdo->exec("SET NAMES utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci"); return self::$pdo; } }