[Fwd: Unicode Conversions]

From: Mark Davis (markdavis@ispchannel.com)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 10:44:20 EDT


Mark Davis wrote:

> >
>
> > Hello all,
> > I have been trying to input unicode from a browser and store it in a database. The problem is the different encodings used to represent the unicode.
> > The input text is in the UTF-8 format. I have read on the Microsoft support site that SQL Server 7.0 uses a different Unicode encoding (UCS-2) and does not recognize UTF-8
> > as valid character data. Of the solutions offered only two were of any use:
> > 1) Convert between the two on input and output
> > 2) Store as raw data in binary form
> > I have been unable to get the raw data into the database correctly so decided to try the first option. However although I keep reading that round conversion between the 2
> > formats is quick, easy and reliable, i have been unable to accomplish this. I am using JSPs, so the Session.Codepage command doesn't work, and anyway I would prefer a
> > less platform specific solution. Does anyone know of a way of converting a java string in UTF-8 to UTF-16 format.
> >
> I talk about it a bit in an older paper of mine, at
> http://www.ibm.com/java/education/globalapps/Converting.html
>
> You can either use the String API or Stream API. For Strings use:
>
> String utf16chars = new String(utf8bytes[],"UTF8");
>
> utf16bytes = utf16chars.getBytes("UTF8");
>
> For Streams, use InputStreamReader
> (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/io/InputStreamReader.html)
> or OutputStreamWriter.
>
> > Also I was wondering if anyone knows why the UTF-8 can't be treated as a regular Latin1 string. My database is set to use the Cp1252 code page, and so should this not
> >
> Whenever you mark bytes with the wrong codepage, you are likely to get
> errors; any software that interprets or converts those bytes will get
> the wrong answer. Using Cp1252 when what you are storing is either
> UTF-8 or UTF-16 will give you problems.
>
> > recognise the characters input to it? eg A japanese character in UTF-8 was broken down to ??? and these three characters are in the windows character set. However by
> > the time it reaches the database it is changed to ? Does this mean that somewhere along the way the string is being changed into a different form where the character set
> > doesn't support certain characters? Does the fact that Java internally uses UTF-16(I think) cause any problems?
> >
> Java supports UCS-2, but UTF-16 is simply an extension of UCS-2, and
> shares the same storage. The difference is not relevant to you here.
>
> >
> > Thanks for any suggestions,
> > Stephen
> > (If you have just gotten this message already I apologise but I was having difficulty with registration)
> >



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