This article shows how to convert a string that has been double encoded using UTF-8.<\/p>\n
For example, say you have the string M\u00c3\u00bcller instead of the string M\u00fcller.<\/p>\n
How did it happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n The letter\u00a0\u00fc is encoded in UTF-8 as 2 bytes: 195 and 188<\/p>\n If you encoded the bytes again then the 195 converts to 195 and 131 which is the\u00a0\u00c3<\/p>\n And the 188 converts to 194 and 188 which is the\u00a0\u00bc<\/p>\n How can it be converted back to what it should look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n The following function will convert the double encoded string back to the original value…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n private\u00a0string\u00a0decodeUTF8String(String\u00a0utf8Str)<\/p>\n {<\/p>\n System.Text.Encoding\u00a0iso = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(“ISO-8859-1”);<\/p>\n System.Text.Encoding\u00a0utf8 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;<\/p>\n byte[] utfBytes = utf8.GetBytes(utf8Str);<\/p>\n byte[] isoBytes = System.Text.Encoding.Convert(utf8, iso, utfBytes);<\/p>\n System.Text.UTF8Encoding\u00a0encoding =\u00a0new\u00a0System.Text.UTF8Encoding();<\/p>\n return\u00a0encoding.GetString(isoBytes);<\/p>\n }<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How does this relate to barcodes?<\/strong><\/p>\n Some PDF-417 barcodes may contain data that has already been encoded using UTF-8 and when we read the barcode we encode it again using UTF-8, giving a double encoded string. In the win32 DLL interface the work-around is simply to set the Encoding property to 0, but the above is necessary in the .Net interface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article shows how to convert a string that has been double encoded using UTF-8. For example, say you have the string M\u00c3\u00bcller instead of the string M\u00fcller. How did it happen? The letter\u00a0\u00fc is encoded in UTF-8 as 2 bytes: 195 and 188 If you encoded the bytes again then the 195 converts to<\/p>\n