made incomplete misc changes

src/main/java/me/imsonmia/epqapi/config/MySQLCustomDialect.java

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+package me.imsonmia.epqapi.config;
+
+import org.hibernate.dialect.MariaDBDialect;
+
+/**
+ * MySQLCustomDialect
+ */
+public class MySQLCustomDialect extends MariaDBDialect {
+    // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42430786/how-to-set-collation-for-table-attribute-as-utf8-bin-in-either-annotation-or-app#54993738
+    @Override
+    public String getTableTypeString() {
+        return " ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci";
+    }
+}

src/main/java/me/imsonmia/epqapi/config/WebSocketConfig.java

@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 package me.imsonmia.epqapi.config;
 
 import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
+import org.springframework.lang.NonNull;
 import org.springframework.messaging.simp.config.MessageBrokerRegistry;
 import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocketMessageBroker;
 import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.StompEndpointRegistry;
@@ -10,12 +11,12 @@ import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketMessageBrokerCo
 @EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
 public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {
     @Override
-    public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
+    public void configureMessageBroker(@NonNull MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
         registry.enableSimpleBroker("/sub");
         registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
     }
     @Override
-    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
+    public void registerStompEndpoints(@NonNull StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
         registry.addEndpoint("/ws").setAllowedOrigins("*");
         
     }

src/main/java/me/imsonmia/epqapi/view/MessageSpecification.java

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+package me.imsonmia.epqapi.view;
+
+import org.springframework.data.jpa.domain.Specification;
+import org.springframework.lang.Nullable;
+
+import jakarta.persistence.criteria.CriteriaBuilder;
+import jakarta.persistence.criteria.CriteriaQuery;
+import jakarta.persistence.criteria.Predicate;
+import jakarta.persistence.criteria.Root;
+import me.imsonmia.epqapi.model.Message;
+
+public class MessageSpecification implements Specification {
+    
+    @Override
+    @Nullable
+    public Predicate toPredicate(Root root, CriteriaQuery query, CriteriaBuilder builder) {
+        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
+        
+        return null;
+    }
+}

src/main/resources/application.properties

@@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
-spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mariadb://127.0.0.1:3306/test?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8
+spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mariadb://127.0.0.1:3306/epqchat
-spring.datasource.username=dbuser
+spring.datasource.username=epqchatuser
-spring.datasource.password=dbpasswd
+spring.datasource.password=epqlevel3artifact
 spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver
+
+# Use custom database handler to ensure that the API and database table collations
+# run in UTF-8-MB4 mode. This should get rid of all the encoding issues previously present.
+spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect=me.imsonmia.epqapi.config.MySQLCustomDialect
 spring.jpa.show-sql: true
-spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop
+# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42135114/how-does-spring-jpa-hibernate-ddl-auto-property-exactly-work-in-spring
+# Summarisation
+# create-drop for testing
+# validate for semi-production
+# none for serious prod scenarios
+spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update