[mapserver-users] how does mapserver determine shapefile encoding?

[Lars Lingner]

Hello Carlos,

I should have been be more precise. By using all the tools, shp2pgsql,
iconv, recode I set the "source encoding" parameter. And I tried
different encodings.

My database is configured for utf8. But the problem arise before the
data is send to the database.

With shp2pgsql I generated an sql file, containing wrong character strings.

With ogr2ogr I tried to convert to csv or json just for testing, but
without success.
Depending on the encoding I get garbage or the error message that the
data couldn't be converted to utf8.

Thank you for your answer.

Lars

Am 02.08.2011 22:01, schrieb Carlos Ruiz:
> Lars,
> 
> When you try to load some data to a PostgreSQL server, you can
> specify the encoding to use.
> 
> This can be done with client_encoding. For example, if you want to
> populate a table with some CSV file contents, you have
> 
> to do the following:
> 
> 
> SET client_encoding = 'LATIN1'; COPY my_table FROM '/usr/file.csv'
> WITH CSV
> 
> 
> Now, when you use shp2pgsql you can't set the client encoding, but
> you can set the default client_encoding of your
> 
> database and every data transfer between some client and your
> database will be encoded properly:
> 
> ALTER DATABASE my_database SET client_encoding = 'LATIN1'
> 
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Cheers from Guadalajara, México
> 
> 
> IC Carlos Ruiz
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________ From: Lars Lingner
> <gislars+list at googlemail.com> To: "'mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org'"
> <mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 2:45
> PM Subject: [mapserver-users] how does mapserver determine shapefile
> encoding?
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have a shapefile from which I don't really know the encoding. It
> might be latin1 or ISO-8559-5. The good thing is, when MapServer is
> accessing the shapefile, the labels are shown correct. QGis is also
> displaying everything fine.
> 
> But when I try to convert with shp2pgsql or ogr I get only garbage
> back. I tried different source encodings. Since I need the data to be
> in the database I'm now trying to find out where the problem is.
> 
> I tried converting the data on different systems (Ubuntu, RedHat),
> with postgis/shp2pgsql from repository as well as self compiled.
> Same results. Also iconv and recode wasn't a help.
> 
> As I said QGis is displaying everything fine it fails in converting
> the shapefile too. Opening the dbf in LibreOffice doesn't helped
> either.
> 
> Finally my (odd) questions are: Why does MapServer do everything
> right? How is the encoding determined? Can I see somewhere which
> encoding is used by MapServer?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any pointers.
> 
> 
> Lars _______________________________________________ mapserver-users
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