German characters not displaying correctly when redaing from URLConnection

Question

I have a java file reading the contents of a generated jsp page and writing to an html file and I have the code below doing that. However a couple of German characters like �, � and � are being changed to � in the html file. I tried to set the encoding for the reader, the OutputStreamWriter and also for the URLConnection, but it does not seem to help.
The data is fine in the database.
Any inputs on resolving this will be greatly appreciated.
public void makeLiveHTMLfile(String uri, String HTMLFileName, String siteUrl, String siteDir) throws
Exception {
//Local vars
int i = 0;
try {
getConnection(uri);
Reader rd = getReader(uri);
FileOutputStream output_file = new FileOutputStream(
SystemProps.getInstance().getProperty( WEBTOOL_HOME_DIR )+"/html/" + HTMLFileName);
OutputStreamWriter output = new OutputStreamWriter(output_file, "UTF8");
while (i != -1) {
i = rd.read();
if (i != -1) {
output.write(i);
rd.close();
output.close();
this.sendFile(HTMLFileName, siteDir, "html", siteUrl);
} catch (Exception e) {
throw e;
private Reader getReader(String uri) throws IOException {
if (uri.startsWith("http:") || uri.startsWith("https:")) {
// Retrieve from Internet.
return new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream(), "UTF8");
} else {
// Retrieve from file.
return new FileReader(uri);
private Writer getWriter(String uri) throws IOException {
if (uri.startsWith("http:") || uri.startsWith("https:")) {
// Retrieve from Internet.
return new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream(), "UTF8");
} else {
// Retrieve from file.
return new FileWriter(uri);
private void getConnection(String uri) throws IOException {
if (uri.startsWith("http:") || uri.startsWith("https:")) {
// Retrieve from Internet.
conn = new URL(uri).openConnection();
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "text/html; charset=utf-8");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Encoding", "utf-8");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", "utf-8");
conn.setDoOutput(true);
conn.setDoInput(true);
Thanks,
Monisha

Answer 1

This web page says that the correct encoding code is "UTF-8", not "UTF8".
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/package-summary.html#charenc
Maybe there are aliases, and it recognises both.... but worth a try.
Also, when you open the web page with a browser and view the source, do you see Utf8 mentioned in the webpage ? Maybe it's not in utf8, and you're trying to force your app to read it as such.
Ps. we won the war... tell them to start speaking English !
regards,
Owen