Java PreparedStatement setString changes characters

Question

As in title: to be sure, I was debugging my application, and so in line, where I put strings into PreparedStatement variable, special characters are changing to "?". I actually don't know where to search for things that should repair it, so I don't know if code is required.. Anyway, I'll put some here:

PreparedStatement stm = null;
String sql = "";

    try{
      sql = "INSERT INTO methods (name, description) VALUES (?, ?)";
      stm = connection.prepareStatement(sql);
      stm.setString(1, method.getName());
      stm.setString(2, method.getDescription());
      //...
    }catch(Exception e){}

while debugging 'name' field was correct in method object, but after adding it into stm variable, it changed it's characters to '?'.

I have found one topic about the similar sitoatuin on SO, but there wasn't any answer that could help me since I exactely know that there is something not right in adding string to statement, not in database. But I don't know what..

Any sugestions?

PS. I'm using netbeans 6.7.1 version

EDIT: I was debugging with standard netbeans debugger, and was checking state of variables before adding strings to 'stm' variable. I was even changing getName() method to static string with special characters. So for sure everything is ok with Method class.

EDIT2: I've made one more test. Checked stm variable and one of it's properties is "charEncoding" which is set to "cp1252". So the main question is.. how to change that?

How were you checking this? What tool did you use to verify the data in the database? — skaffman, Jan 18 '11 at 13:01
Are you saying that the return value of `method.getName()` changed after it has been called? — Joachim Sauer, Jan 18 '11 at 13:01
*Never* do `catch(Exception e){}` - if an exception happens, you'll not know that it did and what went wrong. At the very least print the stack trace: `catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); }` — Jesper, Jan 18 '11 at 13:20
Having the same issue but not fixed yet.. i am using Mysql Workbench 5.2 and Java 7. Kindly help me to fix this — dbyuvaraj, May 16 '13 at 09:31

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

3

this normally happens by using different charsets in different locations. sound like you're getting your input as UTF-8, converting it to another chatset (maybe your database is set to something else) which breaks the special character.

to fix this: use the same charset everywhere*. (i would recommend using UTF-8)

*take a look at this or my answer to another thread (that's about a problem in php, but in java it's almost the same)

edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

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answered Jan 18 '11 at 13:04

oezi

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But the strings aren't going through DB. They are taken from one variable into another one in other file (java class).. JDBC driver changes charset in PreparedStatement variable? – Seraphis Jan 18 '11 at 13:21
See my answer below. It's possible that the JDBC driver is transcoding the String from Java's UTF-8 into the appropriate encoding for the database prior to sending it to the database. – dty Jan 18 '11 at 15:44

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 18 '11 at 13:03

Are you using Oracle? I have had similar situations, if the environment variables regarding character sets weren't defined correctly.

By default, an Oracle connection is ASCII (7-bit characters, A-Z, a-z, numbers, punctuation, ...). If you use any character outside of that (e.g. European accents, Chinese characters, ..) then you need to use something other than ASCII. UTF-8 is best. If you don't, your characters will get replaced by "?".

You'd need to get your sysadmin to set this up for you. Alternatively take a look here:

http://arjudba.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-is-nlslang-environmental-variable.html

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 18 '11 at 13:04

Sounds like a character encoding issue to me. Perhaps the driver is transcoding your strings into the appropriate encoding for the field/table/schema/database rather than letting the server do it? If you are trying to store a character which has no representation in the encoding of the field/table/schema/database, that would explain the '?' characters.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 03 '23 at 06:58

I do this :

PreparedStatement ps = null;
List varBind       = new ArrayList();
String strSQL ="INSERT INTO table..... ";
varBind.add(claveEPO); //1
varBind.add(cg_num_distribuidor); //2
varBind.add(numero_docto); //3

// it's importan to do this
byte ptextRazon[] = cgRazonSocialEpo.getBytes("ISO-8859-1");
String razonSocial = new String(ptextRazon, "UTF-8");
varBind.add(razonSocial);//26

ps = con.queryPrecompilado(strSQL.toString(), varBind);
ps.executeUpdate();
ps.close();

Java PreparedStatement setString changes characters

4 Answers4

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