Understanding character encoding in typical Java web app

Posted by Marcus on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Marcus
Published on 2010-03-28T20:19:13Z Indexed on 2010/03/28 20:23 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 207

Filed under:

character-encoding

|

unicode

|

Oracle

|

java

Some pseudocode from a typical web app:

String a = "A bunch of text"; //UTF-16
saveTextInDb(a); //Write to Oracle VARCHAR(15) column
String b = readTextFromDb(); //UTF-16
out.write(b); //Write to http response

In the first line we create a Java String which uses UTF-16.

When you save to Oracle VARCHAR(15) does Oracle also store this as UTF-16? Does the length of an Oracle VARCHAR refer to number of Unicode characters (and not number of bytes)?

And then when we write b to the ServletResponse is this being written as UTF-16 or are we by default converting to another encoding like UTF-8?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about character-encoding

Harmonizing Character Encoding Between Imported Data and MySQL

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
MySQL's Latin-1 default encoding combined with MySQL 4.1.12's (or greater) UTF8 encoding allows the maximum number of characters codes, however incoming data with different character encoding can still present problems. Rob Gravelle shows you how to avoid problems before a lot of work is required… >>> More
Harmonizing Character Encoding Between Imported Data and MySQL

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
MySQL's Latin-1 default encoding combined with MySQL 4.1.12's (or greater) UTF8 encoding allows the maximum number of characters codes, however incoming data with different character encoding can still present problems. Rob Gravelle shows you how to avoid problems before a lot of work is required… >>> More
How to cross-reference many character encodings with ASCII OR UTFx?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm working with a binary structure, the goal of which is to index the significance of specific bits for any character encoding so that we may trigger events while doing specific checks against the profile. Each character encoding scheme has an associated system record. This record's leading value… >>> More
Determining default character set of platform in Java

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am programming in Java I have the code as: byte[] b = test.getBytes(); In the api it is specified that if we do not specify character encoding it takes the default platform character encoding. What is meant by "default platform character encoding" ? Does it mean the Java encoding or the OS… >>> More
Perl character encoding

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi People, I have an environment variable set in Windows as TEST=abc£ which uses Windows-1252 code page. Now when I run a perl program - 'test.pl', this environment value comes properly. When I call another perl code - 'test2.pl' from 'test1.pl' either by system(..) or Win32::process(..), the environment… >>> More

Related posts about unicode

Translating Between Unicode and Non-Unicode Character Sets in Java

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
You can use Java APIs not only to help translate characters, strings, and text streams to other languages, but also to convert Unicode character sets to non-Unicode and vice versa. >>> More
SQLite, python, unicode, and non-utf data

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I started by trying to store strings in sqlite using python, and got the message: sqlite3.ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just… >>> More
SQLite, python, unicode, and non-utf data

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I started by trying to store strings in sqlite using python, and got the message: sqlite3.ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just… >>> More
notepad sql Unicode and Non Unicode

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I have a Microsoft Notepad flate file with data and Vertical Bar as column delimiter. I get following message: cannot convert between unicode and non-unicode string data types It seems it is my nvarchar(max) that creates my problem. I changed to varchar(max); but still the same problem. How… >>> More
On Windows 7, dir or tree can't show unicode characters, even starting cmd with cmd /U

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
On Windows 7, dir or tree can't show unicode characters, even starting cmd with cmd /U So I would press Window Key + R to run something, and type in cmd /U so that the content might handle Unicode. And then using dir or tree /F, the content in Unicode won't show as Unicode. (in Window Explorer… >>> More