UTF-8 URL Decode / Encode

Question

I instruct my URL to send an Ajax request like that:

url += '/' + something + '/' + id;
var response;
$.ajax({
    async : false,
    type: 'DELETE',
    url: url,
 ...

My removeId is a variable that includes UTF-8 character. I will handle that variable at Java side like that:

@RequestMapping(value = "/something/{id}", method = RequestMethod.DELETE)
    public void myMethod(HttpServletResponse response, @PathVariable String id) {
    ...

However id variable at Java side is different from its original because UTF-8 characters changes to strange things.

How can I send UTF-8 characters from JavaScript side and transform it again at my Java side (Spring 3 with REST, my web server is Tomcat 7)?

PS 1: Even I don't use encodeUriComponent it seems that my URL is encoding by itself?

PS 2: To make question more clear:

i.e. my id variable is araç and sent URL is: localhost:8080/sdfasf/ara%C3%A7

When I see that id variable has that value:

araÃ§

instead of:

ara%C3%A7

Does Spring (or Tomcat) automatically do it? Is there any way to decode it automatically when it comes to controller as a path variable (I mean without writing anything as like:

URLDecoder.decode(id,"UTF-8");

it will be converted automatically)

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

16

The id value you see seems to be decoded using the iso-8859-1 charset instead of utf-8. The encoding of the path part of a url is not specified in java EE and there is no standard api to set it. For query parameters you can use request.setCharacterEncoding before accessing any parameters to have them decoded correctly. The CharacterEncodingFilter does exactly that but has no influence on path parameters.

To make this work in Tomcat you have to set the URIEncoding attribute of the Connector element in its server.xml to "utf-8".

All you ever wanted to know about character encoding in a java webapp can be found in this excellent answer to a similar question.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

Community

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answered Nov 16 '11 at 15:17

Jörn Horstmann

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1

thanks for your answer and voting up. I just want to sure. I use Spring and did that configuration (didn't do anything with Tomcat) and I think that I resolved my problem. Do I miss something (I mean maybe I didn't resolve the problem exactly and some characters will give error too?) and is there any example for how to use request.setCharacterEncoding? – kamaci Nov 16 '11 at 21:33
@kamaci: I did not realize that was your answer and that it already solved your problem when I posted my answer. Calling `setCharacterEncoding` did not work for path parameters with oracle's OC4j container, maybe it does with tomcat. Although that contradicts some answers to similar questions like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8079152/charset-filter-causing-issue-in-parsing-utf-8-characters/8079547#8079547 or http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2630748/how-to-enable-reading-non-ascii-characters-in-servlets/2630977#2630977 – Jörn Horstmann Nov 16 '11 at 22:31

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '11 at 08:17

I found the answer here: http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?14063-How-to-set-setCharacterEncoding-on-Request

I did that configuration at my Spring side:

<filter>
    <filter-name>SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>encoding</param-name>
        <param-value>UTF8</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>forceEncoding</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

and it works fine for UTF-8.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 16 '11 at 06:59

1

Have you tried setting page encoding on the page where you are embedding the javascript?

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>

answered Nov 16 '11 at 06:59

Udo Held

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 16 '11 at 07:05

1

Make sure the page encoding is set to UTF-8 by adding this right below the starting <head> tag:

<meta charset="utf-8">

Also make sure the JavaScript file is saved with UTF-8 encoding. Check your text editor settings.

answered Nov 16 '11 at 07:05

Mathias Bynens

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I have that line at my HTML and my Editor saves my page as UTF-8. I think it is an issue about sending a UTF-8 variable over URL? – kamaci Nov 16 '11 at 07:09
@kamaci What does `console.log(url);` say? – Mathias Bynens Nov 16 '11 at 07:11
@nathias Bynens it is ara%C3%A7 too when I do `console.log(url);` – kamaci Nov 16 '11 at 08:03
@kamaci But when you `console.log(id)` you get `"araç"`? No way. – Mathias Bynens Nov 16 '11 at 08:07
I logged to console encoded URI. If I don't encode it (at javascript side) and log it to console it is `araç`. – kamaci Nov 16 '11 at 08:16
@kamaci Where and why are you encoding it in JavaScript? Your code sample doesn’t show anything like that. – Mathias Bynens Nov 16 '11 at 08:30
I don't encode it right now. Just I tried to encode it and send to server(as indicated PS 1) but result was still same. I don't encode it right now. Thanks for your helps. – kamaci Nov 16 '11 at 09:00

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 15 '15 at 07:23

0

In JavaScript use:

data=encodeURIComponent(data);

for encoding data, and in Java you can do:

data=java.net.URLDecoder.decode(data);

edited Aug 15 '15 at 07:23

S.L. Barth is on codidact.com

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answered Nov 16 '11 at 07:08

Akhil Thayyil

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In the question the id is part of the request path so it already gets decoded by the servlet container. Also, the `decode` method should be called with the second parameter specifying the charset to use. – Jörn Horstmann Nov 16 '11 at 22:38

score -1 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 06 '15 at 11:25

-1

No need to encode the string on javascript side. Java does not support unicode so decoding needs to be done there as:

output = new String(input.getBytes("ISO-8859-1"), "UTF-8");

edited Nov 06 '15 at 11:25

p3drosola

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answered Nov 06 '15 at 11:09

Ruchir Bhagat

1

UTF-8 URL Decode / Encode

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