Be sure to convert your xml file to UTF-8 before sending.
UTF-8 should have those characters converted to their equiv &x0000.
Main Topics
Browse All Topics
Loading Advertisement...
Question
illegal characters and utf-8 encoding
We supply an xml feed to various third-parties and specify encoding='utf-8' in the xml file. We've had a couple of calls this week from a client who could not parse the xml file as it contained one entry where the data contained the vertical bar character (|) and another entry contained an e-acute character rather than the plain e character.
Apparently these characters are not valid in UTF-8 encoding ...
Is there a list of characters (that are not valid in UTF-8 encoding) that we should be filtering out when producing our xml file or should we be using some encoding other than UTF-8 encoding ?
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get
Instant Access to this Solution
- Plus...
- 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
- Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
- Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
- Never be left without tech help again
Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.
- "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
- "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
- "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.
See what Experts Exchange can do for you.
Got a question?
We've got the answer.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
Need individual assistance?
Our experts are ready to help.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Want to learn from the best?
Read articles from industry experts.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Working on a long term project?
Store your work and research.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Trusted by the world's most respected brands.
Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Free Tech Articles
-
WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
-
SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
-
Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
-
Create a Win7 Gadget
This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
-
Outlook continually prompting for username and password
There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
-
Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...
Cloud Class Webinars
- Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
- Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
- IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
- Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
- How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...
Join the Community
Give a Little. Get a Lot.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Answers
> Be sure to convert your xml file to UTF-8 before sending.
that is one of the two options from my post
> UTF-8 should have those characters converted to their equiv &x0000.
"should" is not the correct phrase here and your format is a bit dubious
é could be converted to é (decimal) or é (hexadecimal) but basically that i working around the problem
you don't want to convert the entire list of multibyte characters into a numbered character entity.
This is surely not the approach I would take
You need to find the correct encoding and either pass that encoding (which wold make the XML wellformed)
or transform the file into a real UTF-8 file (and then XSLT is the best option)
cheers
Geert
>You have to find out what the encoding realy is,
>where does it come from? from a database, from a windows text editor?
>likely the correct encoding is ISO-8859-1 or WIN-1252
>If you pass that encoding with the XML, it will be valid for your customer
Thanks for pointing this out - the data in the xml file comes from an sql server database, so I will look into the possibilities of using ISO-8859-1 as an alternative encoding ....
3 Ways to Join
Business Accounts
- Perfect for organizations
- Multiple users
- Save over 36%
- Create a Business Account
Answer for Membership
- Earn free access
- Showcase your knowledge
- No credit card required
- Sign Up to Answer
Loading Advertisement...
by: GertonePosted on 2007-09-13 at 02:16:30ID: 19882421
you sort of take the wrong approach
é and | can perfectly be expresed in UTF-8
The problem is that what you think is UTF-8, simply isn't
so you have to make sure that you find out what the encoding really is and pass that encoding with the XML declaration
encodings specify how a certain character is stored on disk (as bytes)
UTF-8 is a mechanism that uses one byte for the first 127 characters
and uses two bytes for the next 127, three bytes for the next 256 etc...
The first byte of the two byte series is an escape value
The first 127 characters (actualy some are forbidden, so there are a lot less)
are encoded exactly the same way as ASCII or ISO-8859-1,
so if your document only has pretty simple characters, you won't spot the difference in encoding
That is why you thought you could safely label your XML as UTF-8, which it obviously isn't
This is a common mistake: people create XML from various sources and then forget to put the correct XML declaration
(this is when you use tools that are not XML aware to create the XML)
You have to find out what the encoding realy is,
where does it come from? from a database, from a windows text editor?
likely the correct encoding is ISO-8859-1 or WIN-1252
If you pass that encoding with the XML, it will be valid for your customer
If for one reason or another the customer requires UTF-8, do a little identity transform in XSLT on your data
the data will remain teh same, but the "é" will be transformed in a double byte UTF-8char
You ask for a list of characters that are not valid UTF-8.... that list is many tens of thousands characters long,
and it is not correct that they are not valid, they simply can't be expressed in a one byte UTF-8 char,
they require multiple bytes
Hope this helps
Geert