PHP PDO: charset, set names?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4361459/php-pdo-charset-set-names

// get the database connection
    public function getConnection(){
        $this->conn = null;
        try{
            $this->conn = new PDO("mysql:host=" . $this->host . ";dbname=" . $this->db_name, $this->username, $this->password);
            $this->conn->exec("set names utf8");
        }catch(PDOException $exception){
            echo "Connection error: " . $exception->getMessage();
        }
        return $this->conn;
    }