String encoding and decoding

[Sajin Balakrishnan]

I am not able to print other language characters.
What could be the problem?
Sample code:

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.net.URLEncoder;

public class Test {

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		 /* String czech = "Český";
	        String japanese = "日本語";

	        try {
				System.out.println("UTF-8 czech: " + new String(czech.getBytes("UTF-8")));
			
	        System.out.println("UTF-8 japanese: " + new String(japanese.getBytes("UTF-8")));

	        System.out.println("ISO-8859-1 czech: " + new String(czech.getBytes("ISO-8859-1")));
	        System.out.println("ISO-8859-1 japanese: " + new String(japanese.getBytes("ISO-8859-1")));
	        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
				// TODO Auto-generated catch block
				e.printStackTrace();
			}*/
		
		 String input = "日本語";
	        System.out.println("Original input string from client: " + input);

	        String encoded;
			try {
				encoded = URLEncoder.encode(input, "UTF-8");
			
	        System.out.println("URL-encoded by client with UTF-8: " + encoded);

	        String incorrectDecoded = URLDecoder.decode(encoded, "ISO-8859-1");
	        System.out.println("Then URL-decoded by server with ISO-8859-1: " + incorrectDecoded);

	        String correctDecoded = URLDecoder.decode(encoded, "UTF-8");
	        System.out.println("Server should URL-decode with UTF-8: " + correctDecoded);
			} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
				// TODO Auto-generated catch block
				e.printStackTrace();
			}

	}

}

[Tim Moores]

Where are you trying to print the characters? Is it somewhere that can handle umlauts and such?

[Stephan van Hulst]

There are possibly three things going wrong. The first is that you're not telling System.out what encoding you want to use to print. It doesn't matter if you've correctly stored the characters in a String, the output system still needs to know what encoding you want to print the data in.

The second problem is that even if your program prints in the encoding you want, the program that's receiving the data (probably the command prompt, or maybe your IDE console) may not expect this encoding, and interpret the data incorrectly.

The third problem is that even if the console understands exactly what character you want to print, its font does not have a graphical glyph to represent the character, and displays it with a surrogate instead.

I recommend you write a small GUI with a text area, that uses the MS Gothic font. Now try to append different characters to it.

[Sajin Balakrishnan]

actually the problem in converting xml to excel.greek letters are stored in database which when read from database and exported in excel using below method.appears as ??? in excel

private void startWorkBook(File aFile) throws IOException {
		mStream = new FileOutputStream(aFile);
		mStream.write("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?>".getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
		mStream
				.write("<Workbook xmlns=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet\""
						.getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
		mStream.write("xmlns:o=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\""
				.getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
		mStream.write("xmlns:x=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel\""
				.getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
		mStream
				.write("xmlns:ss=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet\""
						.getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
		mStream.write("xmlns:html=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40\">"
				.getBytes());
		mStream.write(mLineFeed);
	}

[Stephan van Hulst]

Sajin, please UseCodeTags when posting code. I have added them to your post, but remember to do it the next time.

Why are you using getBytes() all over the place?

[Sajin Balakrishnan]

ok..beacuse i am writing it to a FileOutputSteam hence convertin it to bytes

[Stephan van Hulst]

This is part of why your program doesn't work as intended. You should not mess around with the raw bytes. Instead, there are some great classes in the standard library that will make life easier for you.

Try using the following:

Writer writer =
  new BufferedWriter(
  new OutputStreamWriter(
  new FileOutputStream(file), "UTF-8"));

Now you will be able to simply write the String you want to the Writer, and it will encode it to the correct character set.

[Sajin Balakrishnan]

Thanks a lot Stephan , it worked.