org.jdom.xpath.Xpath is not returning UTF-8

Question

I have this org.jdom.Document and I get an element out of it and try to output a value with xpath. The problem is that the Norwegain letters come out as ? instead of æ ø å.

Element nameNode = (Element) XPath.selectSingleNode( element, "contentdata/name" );
System.out.print(nameNode.getText());
// Produces "S?rbyen"

When I use

XMLOutputter outputter = new XMLOutputter( Format.getPrettyFormat());
outputter.output( nameNode, System.out );
// Produces "<name>Sørbyen</name>"

So how can I use XPath.selectSingleNode() or nameNode.getText() and return the proper UTF-8?

UPDATE: Turns out that the string is only altered in the console output and comparing nameNode.getText().equalsIgnoreCase("Sørbyen") returns true.

Answer 1

The problem is not with the xpath but it is with the way you are trying to verify the value. Console is not by default UTF-8 enabled. So when you use

System.out.print(nameNode.getText());

it will display some strange characters.

If you are using eclipse then you can configure your console encoding settings by going to Run Configuration > Common -> Encoding -> select UTF-8 from the drop down.

Answer 2

Well problem is not in fetching the character its in the display. use following as command line args for starting application and it should work

-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

Hope it helps

Answer 3

What is the parent of XmlOutputter? If it is OutputStreamWriter then set encoding to "UTF-8" see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/io/OutputStreamWriter.html#OutputStreamWriter(java.io.OutputStream.

Like this:

OutputStreamWriter sw = new OutputStreamWriter(System.out, "UTF-8");