When used for forums, if the forum's title or content is in Vietnamese — for example, "Diễn đàn thảo luận" — an error occurs: "Could not write to the database." This issue does not occur with resources such as PDFs, DOCX, or PPTX files.

Hi, nguyen! Thanks for reaching out.

I ran some tests on my end using Vietnamese characters in forum titles and posts (e.g., "Diễn đàn thảo luận"), and everything worked as expected — no errors occurred.

Please make sure you are using the latest version of the plugin, as recent updates may have addressed potential issues.

Also, I recommend checking your application's database configuration, especially the character set. For proper support of Vietnamese and other extended characters, the database and its tables should use the utf8mb4 character set and a compatible collation like utf8mb4_unicode_ci. This ensures that all Unicode characters are handled correctly.

Let me know if the issue persists after these checks — I’d be happy to help further!

Best regards,
Paulo

Hi Paulo,

Thanks for your response!

I've double-checked and confirmed that all database tables are using the utf8mb4 character set with utf8mb4_unicode_ci collation. However, I'm still encountering errors when inserting data that contains Vietnamese characters.

I'm also using the latest version of the plugin. Could there be any additional configuration needed — for example, in the database connection settings or server configuration?

I've attached a screenshot showing the issue for reference.
https://ibb.co/c4C3Hbb
https://ibb.co/G431hSwk
https://ibb.co/G483mbyb
Appreciate any further suggestions you might have.

Best regards,
Nguyen

Hi, nguyen.

Thanks for providing more information about the error.

Could you please send me the web server log output when you try to access the forum in your course?
If you're using the Apache web server, the log is likely located at /var/log/apache2/error.log.

Thank you,
Paulo

Hi Paulo,

I forgot to mention that I created the prompt for Gemini in Vietnamese. When the prompt is in English, all the summaries (forums) appear in English, so no error is reported. However, when the prompt is in Vietnamese, the returned content is in Vietnamese and an error is triggered: "cannot write to the database."
When the Moodle DEBUG messages are displayed, it indicates that it cannot write special characters (characters that are unreadable when displayed).
For example, a Vietnamese prompt used to summarize a forum is as follows:
$string['prompt:simpleforum'] = 'Bạn sẽ nhận được một loạt các cuộc thảo luận diễn đàn ở định dạng JSON, như ví dụ sau: [{"name": "Tiêu đề thảo luận diễn đàn", "content": "Nội dung các tin nhắn trong cuộc thảo luận"}]. Nhiệm vụ của bạn là viết một bản tóm tắt đơn giản không quá 10 câu về nội dung các cuộc thảo luận và trả về một JSON cùng định dạng, làm nổi bật các điểm chính đã được thảo luận và các kết luận đã đạt được. Tin nhắn diễn đàn: {$a}';
$string['prompt:detailedforum'] = 'Bạn sẽ nhận được một loạt các cuộc thảo luận diễn đàn ở định dạng JSON, như ví dụ sau: [{"name": "Tiêu đề thảo luận diễn đàn", "content": "Nội dung các tin nhắn trong cuộc thảo luận"}]. Nhiệm vụ của bạn là viết một bản tóm tắt chi tiết không quá 20 câu về nội dung các cuộc thảo luận và trả về một JSON cùng định dạng, làm nổi bật các điểm chính đã được thảo luận và các kết luận đã đạt được. Tin nhắn diễn đàn: {$a}';
Thank you,
Nguyen

Hi Nguyen,

I tried to reproduce the issue using the exact same Vietnamese prompt you shared, and everything worked as expected — the forum was summarized without any errors (please see the image bellow). The only difference is that the forum content I tested was in Brazilian Portuguese, not Vietnamese.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eOelkKjMIvkqLN2K6dsqtPIPfIWdTyIP/view?usp=sharing

Best regards,
Paulo

Hi Paulo,

Thank you very much for your support and prompt response.

Unfortunately, the issue still persists. As shown in the attached screenshot ( https://ibb.co/Z12sZ1DD ), we continue to receive the error message: "Could not write to database" when attempting to summarize forum discussions. It appears to be related to character encoding, especially when handling Vietnamese characters like "luận", "lận"...

We would be grateful if you could take another look into this.

Thank you again for your help!

Best regards,
Nguyen

Hi Nguyen.

Could you please share more details about the specific forum discussions that are causing the error?
For example:
1) What is the approximate length and content of the messages?
2) Are they written in Vietnamese?
3) Are there any special symbols or formatting?
4) Does the error happen with every forum or just specific ones?
5) If possible, could you also provide a few examples of the forum messages written in Vietnamese that are triggering the error?

This information will help me better understand and reproduce the issue in a more realistic scenario.

Thank you!

Hi Paulo,
Thank you for your support. Below are the details regarding the issue:
1. The article is approximately 103 words long, the content is in Vietnamese, for example:
Thứ trưởng Công an cho biết nếu quy định xử phạt quá nhẹ, nhiều doanh nghiệp với mức lợi nhuận hàng nghìn tỷ sẵn sàng nộp phạt để kinh doanh dữ liệu cá nhân.
Tại phiên họp Ủy ban Thường vụ Quốc hội sáng 5/6, ông Hùng nhấn mạnh, nhiều hành vi vi phạm trong lĩnh vực dữ liệu cá nhân gây hậu quả nghiêm trọng, đặc biệt khi xảy ra ở các doanh nghiệp công nghệ, tập đoàn đa quốc gia. “Nếu mức phạt quá nhẹ, họ sẵn sàng nộp phạt để đổi lấy lợi nhuận hàng nghìn tỷ đồng”, ông nói.
2. The forum title is in Vietnamese, for example: "Diễn đàn tham luận Bài 1" (if this is the title, the error occurs even when the message content is written in English).
3. The prompt for Gemini is in Vietnamese (as shown in the previously sent message).
4. There are no special characters in the message content or the title.
5. The same error occurs across all forums.
Please let me know if you need additional examples or testing scenarios.
Thanks again!

Hello, Nguyen.

I just created a forum named "Tóm tắt Diễn đàn tham luận Bài 1". Inside it, I also created a discussion topic with the same name "Tóm tắt Diễn đàn tham luận Bài 1", and its content is:

Thứ trưởng Công an cho biết nếu quy định xử phạt quá nhẹ, nhiều doanh nghiệp với mức lợi nhuận hàng nghìn tỷ sẵn sàng nộp phạt để kinh doanh dữ liệu cá nhân. Tại phiên họp Ủy ban Thường vụ Quốc hội sáng 5/6, ông Hùng nhấn mạnh, nhiều hành vi vi phạm trong lĩnh vực dữ liệu cá nhân gây hậu quả nghiêm trọng, đặc biệt khi xảy ra ở các doanh nghiệp công nghệ, tập đoàn đa quốc gia. “Nếu mức phạt quá nhẹ, họ sẵn sàng nộp phạt để đổi lấy lợi nhuận hàng nghìn tỷ đồng”, ông nói.

I executed the plugin using the Vietnamese prompt exactly as you shared in your last message.

Still, I wasn't able to reproduce the error you described. See bellow:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eOelkKjMIvkqLN2K6dsqtPIPfIWdTyIP/view?usp=sharing

Therefore, I suspect it might be related to something specific in your Moodle installation or version.

Could you please let me know which version of Moodle you're using, as well as the version of the plugin?

Hello, Paulo

Thank you very much for taking the time to test the issue and for your detailed response.

I’m currently using Moodle version 4.4 and the SmartEdu plugin version 1.10.2. I will double-check everything on my side, as the problem may be related to the RemUI theme (version 4.4.6), which I am currently using.

I really appreciate your support and will investigate further with this in mind.

Best regards,
Nguyen

Hi, Nguyen.

I also looked for the theme you mentioned to try to install it and reproduce your environment. However, since it’s a paid theme, I wasn’t able to access it. The trial version runs inside a sandbox environment, which unfortunately doesn’t allow me to install or test the plugin — nor reproduce the error.

As a further attempt, if you are able to access the output of the '/var/log/apache2/error.log' file when you try to access the forum, I can take a look and try to understand what happened.

Hi Paulo, first of all, congratulations on this plugin — it's really great.

I’d like to ask how I can make the summaries be generated in Spanish? Is it because the Spanish translation is missing?

Thank you very much.
Andrés

Hi Andrés. Thank you very much.

I generated a Spanish translation of the plugin’s language files using a large language model (LLM).
Could you please review and validate it so I can include it in the next official release of the plugin?

https://github.com/dired-ufla/moodle-block_smartedu/blob/spanish/lang/es/block_smartedu.php

Thank you very much for your help!

Hi Paulo, thank you! I’ll review the translation and get back to you shortly. Happy to help with the next release!