UTF-8 incorrect from org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer

[Jim Cobban]

I must be missing something.

I am using org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer to save a DOM but I am not getting non-basic characters converted to UTF-8.

I create Text nodes in the DOM by, for example:

Document doc;
JTextArea textPrompt;
Text newTextNode;
Element descElt;
....
newTextNode = doc.createTextNode(textPrompt.getText);
descElt.appendChild(newTextNode);

The code to serialize the DOM is:

private void saveXml(Document document)
{
// rename the existing layout file
new File(fileName).renameTo(new File(fileName + "~"));
// write the document out
OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat(document);
format.setIndenting(true);
format.setLineWidth(0);
format.setPreserveSpace(true);
try {
XMLSerializer serializer;
serializer = new XMLSerializer (
new FileWriter(fileName),
format);
serializer.asDOMSerializer;
serializer.serialize(document);
}
catch (IOException ioe)
{
....
}
}

If I enter a character such as e' (e with acute accent) into the JTextArea and I look at the XML file using a non-UTF-8-aware editor I see that the e' has been inserted as a single byte, not as the 2 character UTF-8 escaped value. If I subsequently try to read the XML file using XERCES it blows up because of the invalid escape sequence.

How do I get a valid serialization of this DOM into XML using UTF-8?

 

[Martin Honnen]

I must be missing something.

I am using org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer to save a DOM but I am not getting non-basic characters converted to UTF-8.

I create Text nodes in the DOM by, for example:

Document doc;
JTextArea textPrompt;
Text newTextNode;
Element descElt;
...
newTextNode = doc.createTextNode(textPrompt.getText);
descElt.appendChild(newTextNode);

The code to serialize the DOM is:

private void saveXml(Document document)
{
// rename the existing layout file
new File(fileName).renameTo(new File(fileName + "~"));
// write the document out
OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat(document);

Does it help if you explicitly set
new OutputFormat(document, "UTF-8", true);
??

 

[Jim Cobban]

Does it help if you explicitly set
new OutputFormat(document, "UTF-8", true);
??

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

No. Explicitly setting the format does not change the behavior. The non-basic character is still inserted into the output as a single character rather than as a 2 character UTF-8 escape as it should be.

 

[Jim Cobban]

I must be missing something.

I was misunderstanding something:

XMLSerializer serializer;
serializer = new XMLSerializer (
new FileWriter(fileName),
format);

When I replaced this with:

serializer = new XMLSerializer (
new FileOutputStream(fileName),
format);

it worked correctly. The problem was that by passing in a FileWriter, which is constructed with the default encoding, there was no opportunity to specify the UTF-8 encoding. The second format permits the new instance of XMLSerializer to supply the correct encoding when it constructs the instance of OutputWriter under the covers.

Basically my mistake was copying sample code from the distribution without taking the time to understand exactly what it was doing. Once I took that time I realized that I was using the wrong constructor.