Encoding change question...

The doublequotes isn't UTF8 it's people copying and pasting from Microsoft
stuff, which is WIN-1252. So try to use that with iconv instead of utf8

On 2010-08-16 12:40:03PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:

So I have myself a nice pickle here.....

I've got a database which was originally created with SQL_ASCII for the
encoding (anything goes text fields)

Unfortunately, I have a bunch of data that was encoded in UTF-8 that's
in an RSS feed that I need to load into said database. iconv barfs all
over this file in an attempt to turn it into ISO-8859 (which is what the
web application currently attached to that database is emitting and
collecting.) It appears the problem is (mostly) things like the
stylized double-quotes.

So I figured I'd go the other way, and convert what I have now in the
tables into UTF8.

Well, except that doesn't work either.

ticker=# select convert_to(subject, 'utf8') from post where
ordinal='2098167';
convert_to
----------------------------------------------------------------
1%: the interest rate on IBM\222s most recent three-year bond.
(1 row)

\222 is the correct code point for the styled single apostrophe that is
in that place in ISO-8859-1 in the source. However, the UTF prefix is
missing, as are the other two code-point characters (that is, I got the
code point but not the other two bytes that should be in front of it.
And if I set the code page on the web site to UTF-8, and also set the
encoding on the SQL session to UTF-8 I don't get the three-byte code - I
just get the one byte. That's a bust.

There are TWO fields in this database that need converted. I presumed I
could do something like this:

# update post set field1 = convert_to(field1, 'utf8');

It runs to completion without complaint but produces the above. No good.

So.... is there a way to do this? I do NOT want to dump, iconv on the
dumped file, then reload the database if I can possibly avoid it. Yes,
I know that will work (I've tested it on my development box), but being
able to do this "hot" would be DRAMATICALLY preferred. If I do the
iconv route I am basically rebuilding the entire database with all
that's involved in doing so in terms of downtime and such. VERY
undesirable.

(Equally-valid would be a way to convert UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (Latin1),
thereby allowing me to convert the incoming data stream to what's
already in the system, but thus far I've found no joy on that at all.)

Ideas?

-- Karl

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email;internet:karl@denninger.net
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--
===========================================================
Peter C. Lai | Bard College at Simon's Rock
Systems Administrator | 84 Alford Rd.
Information Technology Svcs. | Gt. Barrington, MA 01230 USA
peter AT simons-rock.edu | (413) 528-7428
===========================================================

Peter C. Lai wrote:

The doublequotes isn't UTF8 it's people copying and pasting from Microsoft
stuff, which is WIN-1252. So try to use that with iconv instead of utf8

On 2010-08-16 12:40:03PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:

So I have myself a nice pickle here.....

I've got a database which was originally created with SQL_ASCII for the
encoding (anything goes text fields)

Unfortunately, I have a bunch of data that was encoded in UTF-8 that's
in an RSS feed that I need to load into said database. iconv barfs all
over this file in an attempt to turn it into ISO-8859 (which is what the
web application currently attached to that database is emitting and
collecting.) It appears the problem is (mostly) things like the
stylized double-quotes.

So I figured I'd go the other way, and convert what I have now in the
tables into UTF8.

Well, except that doesn't work either.

ticker=# select convert_to(subject, 'utf8') from post where
ordinal='2098167';
convert_to
----------------------------------------------------------------
1%: the interest rate on IBM\222s most recent three-year bond.
(1 row)

\222 is the correct code point for the styled single apostrophe that is
in that place in ISO-8859-1 in the source. However, the UTF prefix is
missing, as are the other two code-point characters (that is, I got the
code point but not the other two bytes that should be in front of it.
And if I set the code page on the web site to UTF-8, and also set the
encoding on the SQL session to UTF-8 I don't get the three-byte code - I
just get the one byte. That's a bust.

There are TWO fields in this database that need converted. I presumed I
could do something like this:

# update post set field1 = convert_to(field1, 'utf8');

It runs to completion without complaint but produces the above. No good.

So.... is there a way to do this? I do NOT want to dump, iconv on the
dumped file, then reload the database if I can possibly avoid it. Yes,
I know that will work (I've tested it on my development box), but being
able to do this "hot" would be DRAMATICALLY preferred. If I do the
iconv route I am basically rebuilding the entire database with all
that's involved in doing so in terms of downtime and such. VERY
undesirable.

(Equally-valid would be a way to convert UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (Latin1),
thereby allowing me to convert the incoming data stream to what's
already in the system, but thus far I've found no joy on that at all.)

Ideas?

-- Karl

No, the problem is that the existing data in the database and the web
app that are using it are both ISO-8859-1.

The issue is that the data I need to load INTO the system is in UTF-8
(and really is), and is full of three-byte escapes. iconv barfs all
over it trying to go to ISO-8859-1, so I can't convert the INCOMING data
to what's in the system now. It also won't convert it to Windows-1252
(which is kind of a superset of ISO-8859, and thus the server might not
toss on it too badly.)

FS/karl:~/tmp> iconv -f UTF-8 -t WINDOWS-1252 <rss-marketticker.php

/dev/null

iconv: (stdin):2766:6125: cannot convert

FS/karl:~/tmp> iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-1 <rss-marketticker.php

/dev/null

iconv: (stdin):222:391: cannot convert

The data set that is incoming is some ~30,000 records. The data in the
system already is ~2m records. Obviously, if I can convert the incoming
data that's the better choice, but it appears I can't.

Thus the desire to go the other way - turn the existing data in the
database into UTF-8, which is probably desirable in the future anyway.

I can iconv a pg_dumpall of the database TO UTF-8 and it succeeds (at
least in theory), but the database into which I want to load this data
set is HUGE and dumping and reloading it isn't on my "A" list of things
to do.

If I have to I have to - but if I can avoid this I certainly WANT TO.

What I don't understand is why the Postgres function "convert_to()"
doesn't emit the THREE BYTE sequence, and only emits the codepoint.

-- Karl