XML encoding

[ChrisL]

Hi all,

I wonder if you can point me in the right direction here. I have a process to create some XML documents to be sent to an external application. In the main this works with UTF-8 encoding. I have an issue where some of my data genuinely holds special characters like the German Umlaut etc. This fails translation at the server end because it's not a valid UTF-8 character set.

I've had a bit of a google but can't find anything that points me to the encoding that I should use? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

[B.Hauser]

If you use the SQL functions for creating an XML-document it is automatically (per default) converted into UTF-8. No need to convert anything.

Birgitta

[ChrisL]

If you use the SQL functions for creating an XML-document it is automatically (per default) converted into UTF-8. No need to convert anything.

Birgitta

Unfortunately I'm not and it's too late in the day to change it now, any other ideas? I've already added a process to escape my special characters, I could expand this to cover all special European characters but I don't want to if I can avoid it.

[Scott Klement]

How are you creating the XML?

[ChrisL]

Hi Scott,

We've got an RPG program that writes to work member, substituting variable names with database field values. We then copy the member to a streamfile and suffix it with ".xml".

For example, I've got a file which defines my XML template..

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>                            
<!DOCTYPE dcsmergedata SYSTEM "../lib/interface_sku_config.dtd"> 
<dcsmergedata>                                                   
  <dataheaders>                                                  
    <dataheader transaction=£@SNDTYPE>                           
      <record_type>SKC</record_type>                             
      <config_id>£@CONFIGID</config_id>                          
      <depth_2>£@LENGTH</depth_2>                                
      <each_per_layer>£@LAYER</each_per_layer>                   
      <height_2>£@HEIGHT</height_2>                              
      <layer_height>£@LAYERHI</layer_height>                     
....

My RPG program searches and replaces the "£@" variable names with the database values.

[Scott Klement]

I'm looking for details about how the data gets translated between character sets. All you've told us is "We then copy the member to a streamfile" which is a very broad desciption. Can you show us the exact code used to copy it?