How Do I Ensure UTF-8 Encoding Throughout My Java Web Application?

Get UTF-8 Working in Java Webapps

Problem:

Accessing special characters like Finnish "äöå" and Cyrillic "ЦжФ" in Java webapps requires UTF-8 encoding.

Configuration Steps:

1. Configure Tomcat's server.xml:

   • Specify URIEncoding="UTF-8" within the element to handle URL parameters in UTF-8.

2. Implement a CharsetFilter:

   • Create a filter that sets the request and response encoding to UTF-8 and intercepts requests without a specified encoding.

3. Set JSP page encoding:

   • Add to web.xml or individual JSP pages.

4. Include HTML meta tag:

   • Specify meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' in all XHTML pages to inform the browser about encoding.

5. Configure JDBC connection:

   • Set useEncoding=true and characterEncoding=UTF-8 in the JDBC connection string defined in context.xml.

6. Set MySQL database and tables encoding:

   • Create the database and tables using CREATE DATABASE and CREATE TABLE statements with CHARSET=utf8 specified.

7. Configure MySQL server:

   • Define default-character-set=utf8 in the my.ini or my.cnf configuration files.

8. Check for GET requests:

   • Browsers may handle GET requests differently, so consider URL character encoding and the browser's encoding settings.

Additional Resources:

• [HTTP charset](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/HTTPCharset/)
• [MySQL character set syntax](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-syntax.html)
• [Tomcat UTF-8 wiki](http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/Tomcat/UTF-8)

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