CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsexpress
gsklee
gsklee

Reputation: 4944

Node.js / Express - How do I set response character encoding?

Say I got:

app.get('/json', function(req, res) {
    res.set({
        'content-type': 'application/json'
    }).send('{"status": "0"}');
});

I'm trying to send the response as UTF-8 with the following with no success:

app.get('/json', function(req, res) {
    // From Node.js Official Doc
    // http://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_http_request_options_callback
    res.setEncoding('utf8');

    res.set({
        'content-type': 'application/json'
    }).send('{"status": "0"}');
});

What is the correct way to set character encoding in Express?

Upvotes: 29

Views: 93956

Answers (5)

Siva
Siva

Reputation: 768

This worked for me

res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html; charset=utf-8'});

Upvotes: 3

Ronnie Smith
Ronnie Smith

Reputation: 18585

Before you go to the trouble of manually setting header parameters, check what your server is already sending by default. In my case, I'm using a "serverless" cloud provided Node.js instance. Apparently, these are usually front-ended w/ NGINX which I assume is what sets some of this stuff based on default settings. ...I didn't need to res.set anything at all. Granted, I'm serving back HTML, ...just sayin - before you go fixin, make sure it's broke.

accept-ranges: bytes
accept-ranges: bytes
cache-control: private
content-encoding: gzip
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
date: Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:40:37 GMT
etag: W/"83-xwilN/BBLLLAAAHHH/0NBLAH0U"
function-execution-id: 5thvkjd4wwru
server: nginx
status: 200
vary: accept-encoding, cookie, authorization
via: 1.1 varnish
x-cache: MISS
x-cache-hits: 0
x-cloud-trace-context: 18c611BBBBLLLLAAAHHH9594d9;o=1
x-powered-by: Express
x-served-by: cache-dfw18631-DFW
x-timer: S15BBLLLAAHHH.913934,VS0,VE3404

Upvotes: 1

Iain Collins
Iain Collins

Reputation: 6884

You will probably want to explicitly add a charset to the end of your content-type string if you find it's not being set already by Express:

 res.set({ 'content-type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8' });

The charset is not always set automagically and does need to be set to work correctly everywhere (i.e. with all browsers and all ajax libraries) or you can run into encoding bugs.

In Express 4.x specifically I've found that depending on the object you trying to return, it normally automatically returns with content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8 when you call res.json(someObject), however not always.

When calling res.json() on some objects it can return content-type: application/json (i.e. without the charset encoding!). I'm not actually sure what triggers this, other than it's something about the specific object being returned.

I've only noticed it because of automated tests which explicitly checked the headers and found it was missing the charset declaration on some responses (even though the content-type was still application/json).

Upvotes: 39

Moronicsmurf
Moronicsmurf

Reputation: 21

Having similar issues I'm collecting Swedish characters from a database and outputting them as JSON object, node doesn't really care if json must be UTF-8 or not when the chars from the database isn't in UTF-8.. So assuming "you don't need to set anything" is false. Depending on what charsets you are working with.

Upvotes: 1

Dan Kohn
Dan Kohn

Reputation: 34337

Use res.charset: http://expressjs.com/api.html#res.charset

res.charset = 'value';
res.send('some html');
// => Content-Type: text/html; charset=value

However, JSON is UTF-8 by default so you don't need to set anything.

Upvotes: 14

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