CHARSETENCODE |
Description Uses the specified encoding to convert binary data to a string.
Returns A string representation of the binary object.
Category Conversion functions, String functions
Function syntax
    CharsetEncode(binaryobject, encoding)
See also BinaryDecode, BinaryEncode, CharsetDecode; "Determining the page encoding of server output" in Chapter 17, "Developing Globalized Applications," in ColdFusion MX Developer's Guide
History ColdFusion MX 7: Added this function.
Parameters
Usage Macromedia recommends that you use this function, and not the ToString function, to convert binary data to strings in all new applications.
Example The following example uses the CharsetDecode function to convert a string from a form to a binary object, and uses the CharsetEncode function to convert it back to the original value. You can change the character encoding that ColdFusion uses for the conversion. Notice that if you select the Asian language encodings, characters that are not in the specified character set do get successfully converted.
    <h3>Character Encoding Conversion Example</h3>
    <!--- Do the following if the form has been submitted. --->
    <cfif IsDefined("Form.myString")>

       <!--- Do the conversions. --->
       <cfscript>
          chardecode=CharsetDecode(Form.myString, Form.charEncoding);
          charencode=CharsetEncode(chardecode, Form.charEncoding);
       </cfscript>

       <!--- Display the input values and results. --->
       <cfoutput>
          <h3>Parameter Settings</h3>
          <p><b>The string:</b><br>
              #Form.myString#</p>
          <p><b>The character encoding:</b> #Form.charEncoding#</p>

          <h3>Results of the operations:</h3>
          <p><b>Dump of the string converted to a binary object by CharsetDecode:
             </b><br>
             <cfdump var="#chardecode#"></p>
          <p><b>The binary object converted back to a string by CharsetEncode:
             </b><br>
          #charencode#</p>
       </cfoutput>
    </cfif>

    <!--- The input form. --->
    <form action="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#" method="post">
       <b>Select the character encoding</b><br>
       <!--- This is a subset, additional encodings are available. --->
       <select size="1" name="charEncoding" >
          <option selected>UTF-8</option>
          <option>ASCII</option>
          <option>ISO8859_1</option>
          <option>CP1252</option>
          <option>SJIS</option>
          <option>MS932</option>
          <option>EUC_CN</option>
          <option>Big5</option>
       </select><br>
       <br>
       <b>Enter a string</b><br>
       <textArea name = "myString" cols = "40" rows = "5" WRAP = "VIRTUAL">
    The following four characters are not in all character encodings: ½àç÷
       </textArea><br>
       <br>
       <input type = "Submit" value = "convert my data">
    </form>

BINARYOBJECT |

A variable containing binary data to decode into text.

ENCODING |

The character encoding that was used to encode the string into binary format. It must be a character encoding name recognized by the Java runtime. The following list includes commonly used values:

- utf-8
- iso-8859-1
- windows-1252
- us-ascii
- shift_jis
- iso-2022-jp
- euc-jp
- euc-kr
- big5
- euc-cn
- utf-16

For a complete list of character encoding names supported by Sun Java runtimes, see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html and http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html.