Rails to_json方法：Unicode字符问题

Question

I'm having troubles with unicode characters in my Rails app. The problem is that when I store the object with some string containing scandinavian characters, those characters then are not rendered correctly when using to_json method. Basically all those characters are rendered like this:

\"description\":\"\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\"

Here is example:

 Item.create(:title => "Test title", :description => "With scandic characters öäöäö")
 => #<Item id: 198, title: "Test title", priority: nil, description: "With scandic characters öäöäö", bought_when: nil, warranty_until: nil, created_at: "2012-12-04 15:22:19", updated_at: "2012-12-04 15:22:19", user_id: nil, custom_id: nil, uuid: nil, position: 1, public: nil, secure_details: "", bookmark_id: nil, giveaway: nil, trash: false> 

At this point the created object looks ok.

 Item.last

returns

 => #<Item id: 198, title: "Test title", priority: nil, description: "With scandic characters \xC3\xB6\xC3\xA4\xC3\xB6\xC3\xA4\xC3\xB6", bought_when: nil, warranty_until: nil, created_at: "2012-12-04 15:22:19", updated_at: "2012-12-04 15:22:19", user_id: nil, custom_id: nil, uuid: nil, position: 1, public: nil, secure_details: "", bookmark_id: nil, giveaway: nil, trash: false> 

This "With scandic characters \\xC3\\xB6\\xC3\\xA4\\xC3\\xB6\\xC3\\xA4\\xC3\\xB6" - does it still look ok? Or do I miss some proper encoding already at the item creation stage?

Anyway, now when call Item.last.to_json, I get this:

"description\":\"With scandic characters \\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\\ufffd\"

And at this point the string is definitely broken.

I'm lacking some knowledge about the proper characters encoding in Rails, so any hints would be appreciated. The item, however, looks fine when rendered in the browser - this happens only when doing a JSON response.

Answer 1

Ok, the issue was that MySQL db was not in unicode. This is fixed now by migrating to PosgreSQL, ensuring it is in unicode and using Taps gem to migrate the data. All according to this Railscast: http://railscasts.com/episodes/342-migrating-to-postgresql