Re: Server/Client Encoding Errors

APseudoUtopia wrote:
> I'm having some problems when inserting special characters into a
> column. Here's the table:
>
> ----------------------------------
> Table "public.users_history_ip"
> Column | Type | Modifiers
> ------------+-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------
> id | bigint | not null default nextval('users_history_ip_id_seq'::regclass)
> userid | integer | not null
> ip | inet | not null
> hostname | character varying(512) | not null
> geoip_info | character varying(512) | not null
> start_time | timestamp without time zone | not null
> last_seen | timestamp without time zone | not null
> type | ip_history_type | not null
> Indexes:
> "users_history_ip_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
> Foreign-key constraints:
> "users_history_ip_userid_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (userid) REFERENCES users_main(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
> ----------------------------------
>
> I'm trying to insert information into the geoip_info column. Here's
> some of the information that I'm trying to insert, and the errors:
>
> 'Portugal, 09, Vila Real De Santo António'
> ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xf36e696f
>
> 'Norway, 08, Ålesund'
> ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xc56c
>
> 'Portugal, 04, Vila Nova De Famalicão'
> ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xe36f2c
>
> The locale on the server is "C" and the encoding is "UTF8". I thought
> the UTF8 encoding would allow characters like this? Why is it
> disallowing it?
> Note, the GeoIP info is generated automatically by a module, so I am
> unable to determine exactly what characters will be returned.

The UTF8 encoding allows you to store the characters ó, Å and ã, but
you have to encode them correctly.

Judging from the error messages, you have set your client_encoding to UTF8,
but feed data that are encoded in LATIN1 or WIN1252.

If you feed the client LATIN1 data, set client_encoding to LATIN1 so
that PostgreSQL can correctly convert the characters to UTF-8.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe