Encoding problems in rails on ruby 1.9.1

Question

I am using rails 2.3.3 and ruby 1.9.1.

I am trying to render a view that includes a partial. In the partial i output a field of a model that is encoded in UTF8. This fails with

ActionView::TemplateError (incompatible character encodings: ASCII-8BIT and UTF-8) on line #248 of app/views/movie/show.html.erb:
245:    <!-- Coloumn right | start -->
246:    <div class="col_right">
247: 
248:     <%= render :partial => 'movie_stats' %>
249: 
250:     <!-- uploaders -->
251:     <div class="box_white">

On the other hand, i can output the field with utf8 content just fine if i directly use that field in a view (when it is not in a partial).

How can i fix this? I already tried setting the default encoding but that did not seem to work.

Answer 1

There appears to be an issue with ERB's encoding in Ruby 1.9. More details are in this Lighthouse ticket. A patch with a workaround has been included, perhaps it works for you?

The problem is erb code in ruby 1.9 distribution. When it compiles the template code it forces a 'ASCII-8bit' encoding, the problem is when the template code has multibyte characters the template code is returned in a 'ASCII-8bit' string and when this string is concat with a 'UTF8' string with multibyte character the exception is raised because the strings between this encodings are only compatible when both only have seven-bit characters.

Answer 2

I just had this as well so I think its worth having the correct answer.

The 2.8.1 MySql gem is not utf-8 friendly, so it sometimes will return UTF strings and lie to Rails, telling it that they are ASCII when in fact they are UTF-8. This makes things explode.

So: you can either monkey patch or get a compatible MySql gem. See: http://gnuu.org/2009/11/06/ruby19-rails-mysql-utf8/