Javascript converts french special characters

Question

In my MVC 3 app I have several resx files with message strings such as: "Editer groupe détails". All these are used for either window titles or confirm/alert messages. So, in order to be able to use them in my various .js files I have created in my master page a Javascript object called localizedRessources. The problem is that the strings get altered in this object, for example, the above mentioned string becomes "Editer groupe détails".

What are my options here? Is there a special function that tells JS not to encode these? Is there a way to directly use the strings in my .js files? (this works, by the way, in some cases, but i would rather I didn't have too much js code in my cshtml files).

I have the <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> tag added to my <head> element for all pages, so I am fine there. Any suggestion is welcome.

yes, _especially_ instead of iso-8859-1. .net uses utf-16 natively, javascript utf-8, and when using PHP just save everything in UTF-8 without BOM then you will save yourself of alot of issues - with everything i mean any `.*html` `.css` `.js` etc. — metadings, Feb 04 '14 at 10:01
See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1354491/1352471) for doing that on client side, however there should be a way to not encode it on server side, to render the real character directly. please post some code where you are rendering your localizedResources — metadings, Feb 04 '14 at 10:17
ah, see [ASP.NET MVC Razor render without encoding](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4071602/asp-net-mvc-razor-render-without-encoding) — metadings, Feb 04 '14 at 10:27
Bingo! Thanks a bunch, man! Post your last comment as an answer, so I can accept it ;) — Silviu Preda, Feb 04 '14 at 10:32

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

According to your comment

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
/*...*/
var localizedResources = { 
   FailedUploadErrorMessage: '@Resources.GeneralLocalization.FailedUploadErrorMessage'
/*...*/

you tried to render javaScript using ASP.NET MVC Razor. Usually Razor escapes special characters to entities, like & are becoming & non-named entities like é are becoming é. In javaScript, you need these characters either native in UTF-8/16 (or if really not possible encoded like \u00E9).

In Razor, the @ makes the rendering engine to output an encoded, escaped, entity-fied representation in HTML.

When rendering javaScript you don't want Razors implicit escaping, so what you need is

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
/*...*/
var localizedResources = { 
   FailedUploadErrorMessage: '@Html.Raw(Resources.GeneralLocalization.FailedUploadErrorMessage)'
/*...*/

And oops: also javaScript is UTF-16 (with some caveats)

Javascript converts french special characters

1 Answers1