Is your blog i18n safe?

Yesterday's post exposed an embarrassing flaw in my own blog setup: High-ascii characters didn't display correctly. Previously, nobody had tried to post a high-ascii character in a comment; and I hadn't used any in a post. Now that it's happened, though, I've fixed the problem.

My first thought was that my database (MS SQL Server 2005 Express) hadn't been properly configured to allow the characters. But on inspection, each necessary column was the appropriate nvarchar / ntext type.

As it turns out, the culprit was my CF Datasource settings. If you edit the datasource properties, and then click the "Show Advanced Settings" button, you'll find the confusingly named setting: "String Format" that enables high-ascii characters and unicode.

Screenshot of 'String Format' setting

Enabling this feature opened the door for high-ascii characters, and now they will display correctly here. Special thanks to Ben Nadel for exposing the flaw, and to Oğuz Demirkapı for being our community's i18n test case for as long as anyone can remember.

in ColdFusion | Databases Posted 2010-08-03 09:30

5 responses:

Oğuz Demirkapı
Oğuz Demirkapı 2010-12-17 12:40 AM #
Let us check here too. :)

☕ ⚡ ☀ ☎ ☘ ☮ ☯ ☺
Özkan Özcan
Özkan Özcan 2010-12-17 2:57 AM #
Turkish character test: ÖöÇ窺İıĞğÜü
Adam
Adam 2010-12-17 6:49 AM #
So is that success?
Oğuz Demirkapı
Oğuz Demirkapı 2010-12-17 8:16 PM #
Adam, site is ok but the notification mails still have Unicode issue.

Just FYI.
Adam
Adam 2010-12-17 8:17 PM #
Thanks for the clarification. I'll look into it! :)

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