JSON feed in UTF-8 without byte order marker

Question

I have an WCF application written in C# that deliver my data in JSON or XML, depending on what the user asks for in the query string. Here is a quick snippet of my code that delivers the data:

Encoding utf8 = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);
return WebOperationContext.Current.CreateTextResponse(data, "application/json", utf8);

When I deliver the data using above method, the special characters are all messed up. So Chávez looks like Chávez. On the other hand, if I create the utf8 variable above with the BOM or use the enum (Encoding.UTF8), the special characters are working fine. But then, some of my consumers are complaining that their code is throwing exception when consuming my API. This of course is happening because of the BOM in the feed. Is there a way for me to correctly display the special characters without the BOM in the feed?

Answer 1

It looks like the output is correct, but whatever you are using to display it expects ANSI encoded text. Chávez is what you get when you encode Chávez in UTF-8 and interpret the result as if it was Latin 1.