Re: xPath in a database with LATIN1 encoding

Thanks for the quick reply, Tom. I am trying something simpler. I am trying to find a way to run the xPath function with a xml file type, which has latin characters, such as:
SELECT xpath(‘//xml_test/text()’, convert_from(convert_to(‘<xml_test>çã</xml_test>','utf-8’),'utf-8')::xml)

This line returns the same error, as follows:
[Code: 0, SQL State: 2200M] ERROR: could not parse XML document
Detail: line 1: Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding !
Bytes: 0xE7 0xE3 0x3C 0x2F
<xml_test>çã</xml_test>
^
This happens because the “text”, which is the output from convert_from() function is encoded with LATIN1, the database encoding set, and not UTF-8. Is there a way that a text variable is not encoded as the database encoding set, but some other encoding set, such as UTF-8? From what I’ve searched for, it seems that it would be something similar to nvarchar that only exists in Microsoft SQL Server.

> On 24 Apr 2021, at 13:49, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Jorge Silva <jorge(dot)silva93(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> The characters that it is not recognizing are both “ç” and “ã” because I think they are encoded differently in latin1 and utf-8. Is it possible to somehow use the xPath function with special characters in the XML and in a database which is not encoded with utf-8?
>
> I don't have a lot of expertise in this area, but I think you need
> an explicit encoding indicator in the xml header, a la
>
> <?xml encoding="latin1"?> ...
>
> On the whole, the xml type is definitely easier to use with database
> encoding set to utf8. I think you'll be paying for encoding conversion
> every time we interact with libxml, for instance.
>
> regards, tom lane