EPFImporter with error [WARNING]: Incorrect string value: '\xE6\xB0\x91\xE8\xA8\xB4...' for column 'title' at row 15

When using EPFImporter provided by Apple .Inc to import EPF data into table, it reported the following errors.

[WARNING]: Incorrect string value: '\xE6\xB0\x91\xE8\xA8\xB4...' for column 'title' at row 15

The reason is that the encoding of the column title is utf8 (assuming it is utf8) which cannot store characters larger than 3 bytes. For mysql, utf8 is designed as 3 bytes. After MySQL 5.5, they add another type utf8mb4 to deal with such problem  which is 4-byte encoding.

The solution is to make sure your table is look like this:

CREATE TABLE `epf_application_detail_tmp` (
`export_date` BIGINT(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL,
`application_id` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`language_code` VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT '' COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`title` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`description` LONGTEXT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`release_notes` LONGTEXT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`company_url` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`support_url` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_url_1` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_url_2` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_url_3` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_url_4` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_width_height_1` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_width_height_2` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_width_height_3` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`screenshot_width_height_4` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_url_1` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_url_2` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_url_3` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_url_4` VARCHAR(1000) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_width_height_1` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_width_height_2` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_width_height_3` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
`ipad_screenshot_width_height_4` VARCHAR(20) NULL DEFAULT NULL COLLATE 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
PRIMARY KEY (`application_id`, `language_code`)
)
COLLATE='utf8mb4_unicode_ci'
ENGINE=InnoDB;

For convenience, modify the default setting of mysql.

add the following to my.cnf

[mysqld]

collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci
character-set-server=utf8mb4

Then, restart mysql and then create database e.g., epf to store EPF data. If you create epf already, make sure to change its default setting.