getting "invalid multibyte escape: /^\xFF\xFE/ (SyntaxError)" error on Heroku

Question

I'm using the VPIM gem for rails to create vcards for users based on their profile information.

It all works fine on my local host, but when I deploy to Heroku, the app crashes.

I'm getting the error below in the heroku logs, which I assume is what is causing the app to crash...

/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:251:in `require': /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/vpim-0.695/lib/vpim/vcard.rb:678: invalid multibyte escape: /^\xFE\xFF/ (SyntaxError)
2013-10-27T15:52:14.211497+00:00 app[web.1]: invalid multibyte escape: /^\xFF\xFE/

Any idea on how to fix this issue?

Here's the gem I'm using and some possible solutions that I haven't been able to get working yet. It might be because of my level of understanding of ruby-on-rails.

Gem: github(dot)com/fraser/vpim-rails

Possible solutions: https://github.com/sam-github/vpim/issues/5

https://github.com/GetJobber/vpim-rails/commit/0c92b5d7f9b2f6a59bdeea3127dbb668072371cc

Any help will be much appreciated.

-Ethan

Answer 1

There is a quick fix for it. Open the following file
"/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/vpim-0.695/lib/vpim/vcard.rb"
in text editor, and add the following line at the beginning of file.
"# encoding: ISO-8859-1"

This solved it for me.