Error when reading non-English language character from file - java

I am building an app where users have to guess a secret word. I have *.txt files in assets folder. The problem is that words are in Albanian language. Our language uses letters like "ë" and "ç", so whenever I try to read from the file some word containing any of those characters I get some wicked symbol and I can not implement string.compare() for these characters. I have tried many options with UTF-8, changed Eclipse setting but still the same error.
I wold really appreciate if someone has got any advice.
The code I use to read the files is:
AssetManager am = getAssets();
strOpenFile = "fjalet.txt";
InputStream fins = am.open(strOpenFile);
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins));
ArrayList<String> stringList = new ArrayList<String>();
while ((aDataRow = reader.readLine()) != null) {
aBuffer += aDataRow + "\n";
stringList.add(aDataRow);
}
Otherwise the code works fine, except for mentioned characters

It seems pretty clear that the default encoding that is in force when you create the InputStreamReader does not match the file.
If the file you are trying to read is UTF-8, then this should work:
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
If the file is not UTF-8, then that won't work. Instead you should use the name of the file's true encoding. (My guess is that it is in ISO/IEC_8859-1 or ISO/IEC_8859-16.)
Once you have figured out what the file's encoding really is, you need to try to understand why it does not correspond to your Java platform's default encoding ... and then make a pragmatic decision on what to do about it. (Should you hard-wire the encoding into your application ... as above? Should you make it a configuration property or command parameter? Should you change the default encoding? Should you change the file?)

You need to determine the character encoding that was used when creating the file, and specify this encoding when reading it. If it's UTF-8, for example, use
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, "UTF-8"));
or
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fins, StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
if you're under Java 7.
Text editors like Notepad++ have good heuristics to guess what the encoding of a file is. Try opening it with such an editor and see which encoding it has guessed (if the characters appear correctly).

You should know encoding of the file.
InputStream class reads file binary. Although you can interpet input as character, it will be implicit guessing, which may be wrong.
InputStreamReader class converts binary to chars. But it should know character set.
You should use the following version to feed it by character set.
UPDATE
Don't suggest you have UTF-8 encoded file, which may be wrong. Here in Russia we have such encodings as CP866, WIN1251 and KOI8, which are all differ from UTF8. Probably you have some popular Albanian encoding of text files. Check your OS setting to guess.

Related

How can I change the text-coding of my Java Programm?

I have a Java-Programm, which I develop with Netbeans.
I changed the settings on Netbeans, so that it will understand UTF-8.
But if I clean, and build my Programm and use it with my Windows System, the textcoding changes and letters like: "ü", "ä", and "ö" aren't displayed and used properly anymore.
How can I communicate with my OS and tell him to use UTF-8?
Or is there any good workaround?
EDIT: Sry for beeing so unspecific.
Well, first of all: I use Docx4j and the Apache POI with the getText() Methods to get some Texts from doc, docx, and pdf's and save them in a String.
Then Im trying to match Keywords within those texts, that I read out of an .txt file.
Those Keywords are displayed in a Combobox in the runnable Java-file.
I can see the encoding problems there. It wont match any of Keywords using the words described above.
In my IDE its working fine.
Im trying to post some code here, after I redesign it.
TXT-File is in UTF-8. If I convert it ti ANSI I see the same Problems like in the Jar.
reading out of it:
if(inputfile.exists() && inputfile.canRead())
{
try {
FileReader reader = new FileReader(inputfilepath);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(reader);
String zeile = null;
while ((zeile = in.readLine()) != null) {
while(zeile.startsWith("#"))
{
if (zeile.startsWith(KUERZELTITEL)) {
int cut = zeile.indexOf('=');
zeile = zeile.substring(cut, zeile.length());
eingeleseneTagzeilen.put(KUERZELTITEL, zeile.substring(1));
kuerzel = zeile.substring(1);
}
...
this did it for me:
File readfile = new File(inputfilepath);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(
new FileInputStream(readfile), "UTF8"));
Thx!
Congratulations, I also use UTF-8 for my projects, which seems best.
Simply make sure that editor and compiler use the same encoding. This ensures that string literals in java are correctly encoded in the jar, .class files.
In NetBeans 7.3 there is now one setting (I am using maven builds).
Properties files are historically in ISO-8859-1 or encoded as \uXXXX. So there you have to take care.
Internally Java uses Unicode, so there might be no other problems.
FileReader reader = new FileReader(inputfilepath);
should be
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
new FileInputStream(inputfilepath), "UTF-8")));
The same procedure (explicit extra encoding parameter) for FileWriter (OutputStreamWriter + encoding), String.getBytes(encoding), new String(bytes, encoding).
Try passing -Dfile.encoding=utf-8 as JVM argument.

Reading Arabic chars from text file

I had finished a project in which I read from a text file written with notepad.
The characters in my text file are in Arabic language,and the file encoding type is UTF-8.
When launching my project inside Netbeans(7.0.1) everything seemed to be ok,but when I built the project as a (.jar) file the characters where displayed in this way: ÇáãæÇÞÚááÊØæíÑ.
How could I solve This problem please?
Most likely you are using JVM default character encoding somewhere. If you are 100% sure your file is encoded using UTF-8, make sure you explicitly specify UTF-8 when reading as well. For example this piece of code is broken:
new FileReader("file.txt")
because it uses JVM default character encoding - which you might not have control over and apparently Netbeans uses UTF-8 while your operating system defines something different. Note that this makes FileReader class completely useless if you want your code to be portable.
Instead use the following code snippet:
new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("file.txt"), "UTF-8");
You are not providing your code, but this should give you a general impression how this should be implemented.
Maybe this example will help a little. I will try to print content of utf-8 file to IDE console and system console that is encoded in "Cp852".
My d:\data.txt contains ąźżćąś adsfasdf
Lets check this code
//I will read chars using utf-8 encoding
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
new FileInputStream("d:\\data.txt"), "utf-8"));
//and write to console using Cp852 encoding (works for my windows7 console)
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(System.out,
"Cp852"),true); // "Cp852" is coding used in
// my console in Win7
// ok, lets read data from file
String line;
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
// here I use IDE encoding
System.out.println(line);
// here I print data using Cp852 encoding
out.println(line);
}
When I run it in Eclipse output will be
ąźżćąś adsfasdf
Ą«ľ†Ą? adsfasdf
but output from system console will be

How will append a utf-8 string to a properties file

How will append a utf-8 string to a properties file. I have given the code below.
public static void addNewAppIdToRootFiles() {
Properties properties = new Properties();
try {
FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream("C:\Users\sarika.sukumaran\Desktop\root\root.properties");
properties.load(new InputStreamReader(fin, Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
String propertyStr = new String(("قسيمات").getBytes("iso-8859-1"), "UTF-8");
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(directoryPath + rootFiles, true));
bw.write(propertyStr);
bw.newLine();
bw.flush();
bw.close();
fin.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("Exception : " + e);
}
}
But when I open the file, the string I have written "قسيمات" to the file shows as "??????". Please help me.
OK, your first mistake is getBytes("iso-8859-1"). You should not do these manipulations at all. If you want to write unicode text to file you should open the file and write text. The internal representations of strings in java is unicdoe, so everything will be writter correctly.
You have to care about charset when you are reading file. BTW you do it correctly.
But you do not have to use file manipulation tools to append something to properites file. You can just call prop.setProperty("yourkey", "yourvalue") and then call prop.store(new FileOutputStream(youfilename)).
Ok, I have checked the specification for Properties class. If you use following methods: load() for input stream or store() for output stream, the input/output stream for the file is assumed a iso-8859-1 encoding by default. Therefore, you have to be cautious with a few things:
Some characters in French, German and Portuguese are iso-8859-1 (Latin1) compatible, which they normally work fine in iso-8859-1. So, you don't have to worry that much. But, others like Arabic and Hebrew characters are not Latin1 compatible, so you need to be careful with the choice of encoding for these characters. If you have a mix of characters of French and Arabic, you have no choice but to use Unicode.
What is your current input file's encoding if it already exists to be used with Properties's load() method? If it is not the default iso-8859-1, then you need to figure out what it is first before opening the file. If infile file encoding is UTF-8, then use properties.load(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("infile"), "UTF8"))); Then, stick to this encoding till the end. Match the file encoding with the character encoding as well.
If it is a new input file to be used with Properties's load() method, choose the file encoding that works with your character's encoding. Then, stick to this encoding till the end.
Your expected output file's encoding shall be the same with what is used from Properties's load() method before you use the store() method. If it is not the default iso-8859-1, then you need to figure out what it is first before saving the file. Stick to this encoding till the end. Match the file encoding with the character encoding as well. If outfile file encoding is UTF-8, then specifically use UTF-8 encoding when saving the file. But, if the store() method still ends up with an outfile in iso-8859-1 encoding, then you need to do what is suggested next...
If you stick to the default iso-8859-1, it works fine for characters like French. But, if the characters are not iso-8859-1 or Latin1 encoding compatible, you need to use Unicode escape characters instead as an alternative: for example:\uFE94 for the Arabic ﺔ character. For me, this escaping is too tedious and normally we use native2ascii utility provided in JRE or JDK to convert a properties file from one encoding to another encoding. Of course, there are other ways...just check the references below...For me, it is better to use a properties file in XML format since by default it is UTF-8...
References:
Java properties UTF-8 encoding in Eclipse
Setting the default Java character encoding?

Java linux character encoding issue

I'm facing an issue with character encoding in linux. I'm retrieving a content from amazon S3, which was saved using UTF-8 encoding. The content is in Chinese and I'm able to see the content correctly in the browser.
I'm using amazon SDK to retrieve the content and do some update to it.Here's the code I'm using:
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
S3Object object = client.getObject(new GetObjectRequest(bucketName, key));
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new
InputStreamReader(object.getObjectContent(), "utf-8"));
while (true) {
String line = reader.readLine();
if (line == null)
break;
builder.append(line);
}
This piece of code works fine in Windows environment as I was able to update the content and save it back without messing up any chinese characters in it.
But, its acting differently in linux enviroment. The code is unable to translate the characters properly, the chinese characters are rendered as ???
I'm not sure what's going wrong here. Any pointers will be appreciated.
-Thanks
The default charset is different for the 2 OS's your using.
To start off, you can confirm the difference by printing out the default charset.
Charset.defaultCharset.name()
Somewhere in your code, I think this default charset is being used for some String conversion. The correct procedure should be to track that down, and specify UTF-8.
Without seeing that code, I can only suggest the 'cheating' way to do it: set the default charset explicitly, near the beginning of your code, or at Java startup. See here for changing default charset: Setting the default Java character encoding?
HTH

Convert from Codepage 1252 (Windows) to Java, in Java

I have some strings in Java (originally from an Excel sheet) that I presume are in Windows 1252 codepage. I want them converted to Javas own unicode format. The Excel file was parsed using the JXL package, in case that matter.
I will clarify: apparently the strings gotten from the Excel file look pretty much like it already is some kind of unicode.
WorkbookSettings ws = new WorkbookSettings();
ws.setCharacterSet(someInteger);
Workbook workbook = Workbook.getWorkbook(new File(filename), ws);
Sheet s = workbook.getSheet(sheet);
row = s.getRow(4);
String contents = row[0].getContents();
This is where contents seems to contain something unicode, the åäö are multibyte characters, while the ASCII ones are normal single byte characters. It is most definitely not Latin1. If I print the "contents" string with printLn and redirect it to a hello.txt file, I find that the letter "ö" is represented with two bytes, C3 B6 in hex. (195 and 179 in decimal.)
[edit]
I have tried the suggestions with different codepages etc given below, tried converting from Cp1252 etc. There was some kind of conversion, because I would get some other kind of gibberish instead. As reference I always printed an "ö" string hand coded into the source code, to verify that there was not something wrong with my terminal or typefaces or anything. The manually typed "ö" always worked.
[edit]
I also tried WorkBookSettings as suggested in the comments, but I looked in the code for JXL and characterSet seems to be ignored by parsing code. I think the parsing code just looks at whatever encoding the XLS file is supposed to be in.
WorkbookSettings ws = new WorkbookSettings();
ws.setEncoding("CP1250");
Worked for me.
If none of the answer above solve the problem, the trick might be done like this:
String myOutput = new String (myInput, "UTF-8");
This should decode the incoming string, whatever its format.
When Java parses a file it uses some encoding to read the bytes on the disk and create bytes in memory. The default encoding varies from platform to platform. Java's internal String representation is Unicode already, so if it parses the file with the right encoding then you are already done; just write out the data in any encoding you want.
If your strings appear corrupted when you look at them in Java, it is probably because you are using the wrong encoding to read the data. Excel is probably using UTF-16 (Little-Endian I think) but I'd expect a library like JXL should be able to detect it appropriately. I've looked at the Javadocs for JXL and it doesn't do anything with character encodings. I imagine it auto-detects any encodings as it needs to.
Do you just need to write the already loaded strings to a text file? If so, then something like the following will work:
String text = getCP1252Text(); // doesn't matter what the original encoding was, Java always uses Unicode
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("test.txt"); // Open file
OutputStreamWriter osw = new OutputStreamWriter(fos, "UTF-16"); // Specify character encoding
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(osw);
pw.print(text ); // repeat as needed
pw.close(); // cleanup
osw.close();
fos.close();
If your problem is something else please edit your question and provide more details.
You need to specify the correct encoding when the file is parsed - once you have a Java String based on the wrong encoding, it's too late.
JXL allows you to specify the encoding by passing a WorkbookSettings object to the factory method.
"windows-1252"/"Cp1252" is not required to be supported by JREs, but is by Sun's (and presumably most others). See the "Supported Encodings" in your JDK documentation. Then it's just a matter of using String, InputStreamReader or similar to decode the bytes into chars.
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream (yourFile);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fis,"CP1250"));
And do with reader whatever you'd do directly with file.
Your description indicates that the encoding is UTF-8 and indeed C3 B6 is the UTF-8 encoding for 'ö'.

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