OutputStreamWriter encoding vs response content-type

Question

I have an OutputStreamWriter in my Servlet that uses a particular encoding scheme, ie I have to use this constructor

OutputStreamWriter(OutputStream out, String charsetName)

Also, I have used the following line of code to set the encoding scheme of the response

response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-8")

Using this output stream I am sending response to the client.

Now in the browser the decoding will be done by which scheme UTF-8 or charsetName. Can someone explain me why?

Answer 1

The line

OutputStreamWriter(OutputStream out, String charsetName)

tells the writer which charset to use for encoding.

The line

 response.setContentType(text/html;charset=UTF-8)

sets the contentType header in the http response and tells the browser which encoding to use for displaying the content.

Answer 2

The browser will handle the content based on the Content-Type header. The charset you use for the OutputStreamWriter only affects how characters written to it are encoded into bytes.