Java Unicode problem

Question

Hi there. My question would be what's wrong with the next code? I'm trying with j2ee to read some unicode from a database and some characters are returned as the famous question mark.

try { Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"); String connectionUrl = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/hortimart?" + "user=webservices&password=stipjeservers"; Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(connectionUrl);

        Statement stmt = null;
        ResultSet rs = null;
        String SQL = "SELECT FirstName,LastName FROM users";

        stmt = con.createStatement();
        rs = stmt.executeQuery(SQL);

        while (rs.next())
        {

            byte[] firstNameBytes = rs.getBytes(1);
            String FirstName =new String(firstNameBytes,"UTF-8");
            byte [] lastNameBytes = rs.getBytes(2);
            String LastName =new String(lastNameBytes,"UTF-8");
            System.out.println(FirstName+" "+LastName);

        }

    }
    catch (SQLException e)
    {
        System.out.println("SQL Exception: "+ e.toString());
    }
    catch (ClassNotFoundException cE)
    {
        System.out.println("Class Not Found Exception: "+ cE.toString());
    }

Now i've tried this code with j2Se as well and it works. So is it j2EE or i missed something in my code?

Thanks

Answer 1

try to append characterEncoding=utf-8 to your connection url. ie:

String connectionUrl = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/hortimart?" + "user=webservices&password=stipjeservers&characterEncoding=utf-8

Answer 2

Do you know if the strings have been encoded in UTF-8 (Unicode encompasses many encodings, UTF-8 being only one of them). Have you tried using a simple rs.getString(1) ?

Answer 3

It could be that either i) you have data in the database that is not unicode (how are your tables defined?) or ii) that your driver is not unicode-enabled.

EDIT: Have you tried setting both useUnicode and characterEncoding in your connection string?

...useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8

Answer 4

It's most likely your console that's misconfigured. Have you examined the bytes of the result to see if it's UTF-8?