Encoding non UTF-8 text in Parameters in ASP.NET MVC

Question

Background

I have a web application that uses ISO-8859-1 encoding. When I pass parameters using Html.ActionLink(), the value is decoded to UTF-8:

Web.config:

<globalization requestEncoding="iso-8859-1" responseEncoding="iso-8859-1"
               fileEncoding="iso-8859-1" />

Index.aspx

This is a <%= Html.ActionLink("test", "Read", new { name="Cosméticos" }) %>

generates the following:

This is a <a href="/Intranet/Read?name=Cosm%C3%A9ticos">test</a>

The problem is the value I receive in my controller is UTF-8, not iso-8859-1:

TestController:

public ActionResult Read(string name) {
  //name is "Cosméticos" here!
}

Question

Why the string is not decoded to Cosméticos?

Answer 1

Does your aspx files are physically saved in iso-8859-1?

"File / Save Xyz As" And click at the right of the save button to have more encoding options to save your file in..

A guess

Answer 2

I found the problem and the workaround: the value I receive is UTF-8, but if I try to use System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(name) it converts the characters "é" to UTF-8 values instead of "É".

The workaround is to copy the string to a byte[] and then use System.Text.Encoding.Convert().

I don't know if this is the best way, but now everything is working for me.

Answer 3

    public static string ActionLinkNoEncode(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string linkText, ActionResult action )
    {

        var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext);   
        var url = Uri.UnescapeDataString(urlHelper.Action(action)).ToLowerInvariant();  
        var linkTagBuilder = new TagBuilder("a");   
        linkTagBuilder.MergeAttribute("href", url);
        linkTagBuilder.InnerHtml = linkText;
        return linkTagBuilder.ToString();

    }