defaults/

This directory contains default variable definition files for the docker-mariadb Ansible role. It centralizes all configurable values related to MariaDB deployment and can be adjusted without modifying task logic.

files and their purpose

main.yml

Defines default values for how the MariaDB database should be created.

  • database_encoding (string):

    • Default: "utf8mb4"

    • Reasoning:

      • Full Unicode support: utf8mb4 is the only MySQL/MariaDB character set that fully implements 4‑byte UTF‑8, allowing storage of emojis, supplementary symbols, and all global scripts without data loss.

      • Future‑proof: Modern applications and standards have converged on UTF‑8; using utf8mb4 avoids migration challenges later.

      • Performance trade‑off: While slightly more storage might be used compared to latin1, the universality of utf8mb4 outweighs the cost for most deployments.

  • database_collation (string):

    • Default: "utf8mb4_unicode_ci"

    • Reasoning:

      • Accurate sorting & comparison: This collation uses full Unicode algorithm rules, ensuring linguistically correct comparisons across many languages.

      • Case‑insensitive (ci): Most web apps expect case‑insensitive matching for usernames, emails, and search queries, improving usability.

      • Neutral choice: Unlike language‑specific collations, unicode_ci works robustly in multilingual contexts without bias.

Tip: If you have a legacy application requiring a different charset or collation (e.g., for backward compatibility with existing data), simply override database_encoding and database_collation in your playbook-level variables.

Overriding default variables

To customize any of these values without editing role defaults:

  1. Create or update a playbook-level vars file (e.g. group_vars/all/docker-mariadb.yml).

  2. Set the desired values, for example:

    database_encoding: "latin1"
database_collation: "latin1_swedish_ci"

  3. Run your playbook—Ansible’s variable precedence ensures your overrides take effect.