A java unicode problem against MySQL

Question

Hi members,
need your suggestions regarding a weird problem.
I have a standalone java utility which is used parse xmls containing english and hindi text and store the data in MySQL. I can see data stored as hindi in the MySQL database. the data is correctly stored in the database.
All character sets and collations seem to be set correct. Character set in Mysql itable, columns and database is UTF8 and Collations are utf8_unicode_ci.
But the problem now is that, when i try to retrieve the data from the database - the hindi text comes out as ???????.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
MySQL 5.0
JDBC - 5.0
Connection uri = String uri = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/DATABASE_NAME?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8";
Thanks,
VK

Answer 1

Vishal.MK wrote:
But the problem now is that, when i try to retrieve the data from the database - the hindi text comes out as ???????.I'd guess you have a problem when printing the data retrieved from the database and not with the actual retrieving.
A "?" is generated when you try to convert some text into an encoding that doesn't support the Unicode codepoints used in the text. For example, if you try to convert 3 Unicode codepoints from the Hindi area into ISO-8859-1 (which basically supports the latin alphabet only) you'll get 3 question marks.
How do you print that text? If you use System.out.println() and are using Windows, then you should know that the Windows command line window (used by cmd.exe and java.exe) only has very limited support for text outside the current locales code page.
Try displaying the String using Swing (JOptionPane is probably the easiest way) or print the separate values of the characters of the String to verify that they are restored correctly.