delphiutf-8delphi-xe4webbroker

Getting non-ASCII characters into WebBroker response in Delphi

I have a MS SQL Server database with nvarchar data, and in particular a data field with "★ABC★" in it. My Delphi desktop application displays it fine, but the same data from my WebBroker application in Delphi XE4 that uses a TDataSetTableProducer to generate the response doesn't work. Here's the bare bones sample code:

procedure TWebModule1.WebModule1TestAction(Sender: TObject;
  Request: TWebRequest; Response: TWebResponse; var Handled: Boolean);
begin
  Response.ContentEncoding := 'text/plain; charset="UTF-8"';
  Response.Content := '<!DOCTYPE html>'
  + '<html>'
  + '<body>'
  + '<p> ★ABC★ </p>'
  + '</body>'
  + '</html>'
end;

When viewed in a web browser, the result is "?ABC?". I've tried lots of things (including UTF-16 and prefixing the response with Char($FEFF)), but nothing helps. What's the right way to do this?

Solution

  • 'text/plain; charset="UTF-8"' is not a valid value for the Response.ContentEncoding property. You need to put it in the Response.ContentType property instead. Also, it should be using text/html instead of text/plain:

    Response.ContentType := 'text/html; charset="UTF-8"';

    If a browser is still not able to display the data correctly, you may have to use the Response.ContentStream property instead of the Response.Content property, so you can encode the UTF-8 data yourself:

    procedure TWebModule1.WebModule1TestAction(Sender: TObject;
  Request: TWebRequest; Response: TWebResponse; var Handled: Boolean);
begin
  Response.ContentType := 'text/html; charset="UTF-8"';
  Response.ContentStream := TStringStream.Create(
    '<!DOCTYPE html>'
    + '<html>'
    + '<body>'
    + '<p> ★ABC★ </p>'
    + '</body>'
    + '</html>',
    TEncoding.UTF8);
end;