Converting from Windows-1251 to UTF-8 in Node.js

Question

I need to convert a string from Windows-1251 to UTF-8.

I tried to do this with iconv, but all I get is something like this:

пїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅ пїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅ пїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅпїЅ

var iconv = new Iconv('windows-1251', 'utf-8')
title = iconv.convert(title).toString('utf-8')

Answer 1

Here is working solution to your problem. You have to use Buffer and convert your string to binary first.

const Iconv = require('iconv').Iconv;

request({ 
    uri: website_url,
    method: 'GET',
    encoding: 'binary'
}, function (error, response, body) {

        const body = new Buffer(body, 'binary');
        conv = Iconv('windows-1251', 'utf8');
        body = conv.convert(body).toString();

});

Answer 2

If you're reading from file, you could use something like that:

const iconv = require('iconv-lite');
const fs = require("fs");

fs.readFile("filename.xml", null, (err, data) => { 
    if(err) { 
        console.log(err)
        return
    }

    const encodedData = iconv.encode(iconv.decode(data, 'win1251'), 'utf8')
    fs.writeFile("result_filename.xml", encodedData, () => { })
})

Answer 3

I use Node version 16 and code bellow works fine. You don't need to use Buffer node will write warnings. You need to install iconv package before.

        fs = require('fs')
        fs.readFile('printed_document.txt', function (err,data) {
            if (err) {
                return console.log(err);
            }
            console.log(require('iconv').Iconv('windows-1251', 'utf-8').convert(data).toString())
        })