Bad Encoding when receiving response from HttpClient in UWP

Question

I am making uwp(Universal Windows Platform) application and want to deserialize this xml: http://radioa24.info/ramowka.php to object, but I got instead for scpecial characters as ł, ó some strange letters and special ones like: \n and \r: "Ä…"=>"ą" "Ä‡"=>"ć" "Ä™"=>"ę" For example instead of Poniedziałek i got PoniedziaÅ\u0082ek

My code:

var httpClient = new HttpClient();
var response = await httpClient.GetAsync(uri).AsTask();
response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
var result = await httpResponse.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

I was trying to make some Encoding convertions but nothing worked out. How to solve it because later I want to got my object?

var reader = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Sources.Schedule));
using (var tr = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(resultString)))
{
   Schedule = (Sources.Schedule)reader.Deserialize(res);
}

Are you sure the response of http://radioa24.info/ramowka.php is UTF-8 encoded? — Andrew Au, Jan 27 '16 at 21:58
I'm also having this problem. My code works fine in .NET Core. I recommend trying your snippet of code in .NET Core. I bet it will work. I think this is a problem in UWP. — Christian Findlay, Jan 15 '18 at 05:58
This is driving me nuts!!! I am able to consume most REST apis in UWP, but this one REST API doesn't work. Why? — Christian Findlay, Jan 15 '18 at 06:02
Are you by any chance referencing a .NET Standard DLL in your UWP project, and this is the project that is making the call? This is my scenario. — Christian Findlay, Jan 15 '18 at 06:15

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 27 '16 at 22:09

Please can you try the code below, reading data as bytes solves your issue.

using (HttpClient client = new HttpClient())
{
    Uri url = new Uri("http://radioa24.info/ramowka.php");
    HttpRequestMessage httpRequest = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, url);
    Task<HttpResponseMessage> responseAsync = client.SendRequestAsync(httpRequest).AsTask();
    responseAsync.Wait();
    responseAsync.Result.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

    Task<IBuffer> asyncBuffer = responseAsync.Result.Content.ReadAsBufferAsync().AsTask();
    asyncBuffer.Wait();
    byte[] resultByteArray = asyncBuffer.Result.ToArray();
    string responseString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(resultByteArray, 0, resultByteArray.Length);

    responseAsync.Result.Dispose();
}

I have tested both methods and saw the bad and correct chars. For this method responseString is pretty fine. Hope that works in your app too. @Levvy — Cihan Uygun, Jan 27 '16 at 22:38

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:16

As Jon Skeet notes in his answer this should be fixed on the server. If you check the server sends back the following Content-Type header:

Content-Type: text/xml

It should tell you the encoding (Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8), that's why it should be a server fix.

But if you are sure that this is UTF-8 (it is, because the response xml contains <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>), you can do this:

var httpClient = new HttpClient();
var response = await httpClient.GetBufferAsync(uri);
var bytes = response.ToArray();
var properEncodedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);

I will ask friend who have this script to fix that. ;) – Levvy Jan 27 '16 at 22:34 — Levvy, Jan 27 '16 at 22:34

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 27 '16 at 22:03

Here is my example that works fine with Polish words.

Method to get xml from page:

    public async Task<string> GetXMl(string uri)
    {
        string result = null;
        using (HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient())
        {
            var response = await httpClient.GetAsync(uri);
            result = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        }
        return result;
    }

Method to deserialize xml:

    public void DeserializeXml(string xml)
    {
        var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ramowka));
        var buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
        using (var stream = new MemoryStream(buffer))
        {
            var ramowka = (ramowka)serializer.Deserialize(stream);
        }
    }

Example how to use methods, for example in button click event:

    private async void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        string xml = await GetXMl("http://radioa24.info/ramowka.php");
        DeserializeXml(xml);
    }

Also here you are converted by Visual Studio xml to C# classes http://pastebin.com/aJ4B1aCF

Thanks for that. I actually have almost same C# classes – Levvy Jan 27 '16 at 22:30 — Levvy, Jan 27 '16 at 22:30

Bad Encoding when receiving response from HttpClient in UWP

3 Answers3