Decode UTF-8 with Javascript

Asked 13/11, 2012 at 6:37 Answered 21/4, 2022 at 0:4

javascript unicode utf8-decode xhtml-transitional

I have Javascript in an XHTML web page that is passing UTF-8 encoded strings. It needs to continue to pass the UTF-8 version, as well as decode it. How is it possible to decode a UTF-8 string for display?

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
function updateUser(usernameSent){
    var usernameReceived = usernameSent; // Current value: GrÃƒÂ¶ÃƒÂŸe
    var usernameDecoded = usernameReceived;  // Decode to: Größe
    var html2id = '';
    html2id += 'Encoded: ' + usernameReceived + '<br />Decoded: ' + usernameDecoded;
    document.getElementById('userId').innerHTML = html2id;
}
// ]]>
</script>

Penis answered 13/11, 2012 at 6:37 Comment(21)

So what's your problem? give an example. – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 6:43

I need to decode the UTF-8; Größe should be decoded from GrÃƒÂ¶ÃƒÂŸe – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 6:50

What's the GrÃƒÂ¶ÃƒÂŸe? It's not URL encoded. – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 6:51

This is not a problem you use JavaScript to solve. The way to solve it would be to add an appropriate meta tag like <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8" /> and XML declaration like <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>. – Uncrowned 13/11, 2012 at 6:53

And put the meta as the first tag in <head> section. Send BOM to client also do the job. – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 6:55

I also need to keep it encoded in the same script. – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 6:59

What? As long as your webpage is encoded in UTF-8, js will treat strings as UTF-8 encoded, and encodeURIComponent() and decodeURIComponent() will assume the data is UTF-8 encoding. – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 7:7

where and why the extra xml declaration? – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 7:18

"GrÃƒÂ¶ÃƒÂŸe" is not UTF-8 (well, it may be, but not intrinsically), it's a mess. It's already broken. Several times, apparently. It doesn't need to be "decoded", wherever it's failing and becomes broken needs to be fixed. Give more context information, otherwise it's hard to help. – Depolarize 13/11, 2012 at 7:18

That's how PHP encoded it apparently, seems to decode it just fine. It knows what to do with it after this, just can't display the text right. – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 7:21

Looks like GrÃ¶Ãe on the web page not decoded. – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 7:23

What Every Programmer Absolutely, Positively Needs To Know About Encodings And Character Sets To Work With Text and Handling Unicode Front To Back In A Web App – Depolarize 13/11, 2012 at 7:25

Wher is your data come from? and how you delivered it to client? The encoding setting is needed for every step. allseeing-i.com/How-to-setup-your-PHP-site-to-use-UTF8 – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 7:37

The data is a filename UTF8_encode by PHP. It's decoded into this page where it is eventually passed back to PHP on the same page (working). – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 7:42

If the data is encoded in UTF8, there is no need to decode before send to client. can you post the whole thing in your question? – Hamlet 13/11, 2012 at 7:44

Don't randomly apply utf8_encode. Do you need it? Do you know why you need it? – Depolarize 13/11, 2012 at 7:50

If the user tries to use it then yes. It's not randomly applied, but done so file names won't break. – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 7:56

The "it" in "user tries to use it" refers to UTF-8? Then you don't need utf8_encode. Not necessarily. utf8_encode transforms the encoding of a string from ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8. It tries to do that even if the string is already UTF-8. UTF-8 "Größe" → utf8_encode → "GrÃ¶Ãe" → utf8_encode "GrÃÂ¶ÃÂe". If you apply it when you don't need it, your string screws up. – Depolarize 13/11, 2012 at 9:13

Ahh, I must be double encoding and decoding with PHP/XHTML for the filename. Is there a better way to make a filename, like MD5? What I'm trying to do still is Decode UTF-8 with Javscript! – Penis 13/11, 2012 at 20:53

I'm voting to close this question because it's completely misleading and it's only attracting equally misleading answers that only spread confusion. – Corporeal 17/11, 2016 at 10:0

I agree with previous people about how misleading this thread is, but what most people are actually looking for is a pure javascript encoding/decoding library that will solve their encoding issues, so this is what I found when I googled on more than just UTF8 encoding/decoding : github.com/inexorabletash/text-encoding , This is a paste from their README : All encodings from the Encoding specification are supported, Enjoy ! – Pipe 26/2, 2019 at 10:21

185

To answer the original question: here is how you decode utf-8 in javascript:

http://ecmanaut.blogspot.ca/2006/07/encoding-decoding-utf8-in-javascript.html

Specifically,

function encode_utf8(s) {
  return unescape(encodeURIComponent(s));
}

function decode_utf8(s) {
  return decodeURIComponent(escape(s));
}

We have been using this in our production code for 6 years, and it has worked flawlessly.

Note, however, that escape() and unescape() are deprecated. See this.

Ollayos answered 3/12, 2012 at 20:53 Comment(15)

I've tried using the decodeURIComponent(escape(usernameReceived)) and decodeURIComponent(usernameReceived), but neither are transforming usernameReceived. Can you show some functional code? – Penis 29/1, 2014 at 20:25

Here is my code: s = decodeURIComponent( escape( s )); Note that you have to put it in a try/catch block. – Ollayos 30/1, 2014 at 21:23

Please considering marking the answer as accepted if it answers the question, or let me know if you still have problems with it. – Ollayos 11/11, 2015 at 18:59

This works for me. But the as you know escape method id deprecated. We are using TypeScript and its not there by default. So what is the best alternative for escape. encodeURI & encodeURIComponent doesn't work to replace escape her in this scenario as they produce different output. – Crystallography 10/12, 2015 at 15:56

Joymon: you would need to replace both the escape() and unescape(). I haven't tried it myself though. – Ollayos 10/12, 2015 at 22:27

not work of plugin jquery UI tabs ... necessary <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"> to work fine. thanks! – Fruity 18/9, 2017 at 13:34

I've been asked to add a comment because I downvoted this. But all I can say is that since escape is deprecated, this answer is not acceptable. Why is escape deprecated if it performs an important function? And why is there no native UTF-8 support in JavaScript? And why does no one care (last comment was two years ago). – Gasp 5/9, 2019 at 15:57

David: yes, you're correct. I've updated the answer to note that escape and unescape are deprecated. Replacing with encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent doesn't appear to work (unsurprising, as you would then be calling the same encode/decode function, resulting in no effect). I think it is unlikely that these will be removed soon, but if they are removed (or if you want to be safe), the best option would be to use lauthu or fakedrake's solution. – Ollayos 6/9, 2019 at 16:56

When a deprecated functionality is actually useful, the best way to prevent it from being removed is to keep using it instead of refraining from using it. Browser vendors use usage statistics to determine when to remove a feature. – Holcomb 4/10, 2019 at 14:39

See also stackoverflow.com/a/37303214 for reference (implementation of escape()) – Superimpose 7/2, 2022 at 11:39

This solution totally worked for me in order to accept Chinese text search in a NodeJS-based API implementation.. – Oliva 12/4, 2022 at 6:11

How is this deprecated function, apparently deprecated for over 7 years now, still the only simple way to parse a UTF-8 string such as this : "{\"campaign_memberships\":{\"JÅ\u008dzai Corp\":\"admin\"}}"? – Barfuss 29/4, 2022 at 14:30

dont work with "LuÃ§as JoÃ£o" – Spacial 5/1, 2023 at 13:18

Works perfectly with that string on chrome. When I encode and then decode it, it results in the original string again. – Ollayos 5/1, 2023 at 17:8

Thank you. return decodeURIComponent(escape(s)); Worked for me. – Impassible 8/11, 2023 at 3:5

This should work:

// http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/amuse/javascript/expert/utf.txt

/* utf.js - UTF-8 <=> UTF-16 convertion
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1999 Masanao Izumo <[email protected]>
 * Version: 1.0
 * LastModified: Dec 25 1999
 * This library is free.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it.
 */

function Utf8ArrayToStr(array) {
    var out, i, len, c;
    var char2, char3;

    out = "";
    len = array.length;
    i = 0;
    while(i < len) {
    c = array[i++];
    switch(c >> 4)
    { 
      case 0: case 1: case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: case 6: case 7:
        // 0xxxxxxx
        out += String.fromCharCode(c);
        break;
      case 12: case 13:
        // 110x xxxx   10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x1F) << 6) | (char2 & 0x3F));
        break;
      case 14:
        // 1110 xxxx  10xx xxxx  10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        char3 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x0F) << 12) |
                       ((char2 & 0x3F) << 6) |
                       ((char3 & 0x3F) << 0));
        break;
    }
    }

    return out;
}

Check out the JSFiddle demo.

Also see the related questions: here and here

Thereinto answered 13/3, 2014 at 8:34 Comment(3)

Upvote for actually understanding what decoding UTF-8 is. – Padilla 10/9, 2015 at 14:5

This code is incorrect. fromCharCode accepts UTF-16 values so you need to convert to UTF-16 before invoking it. – Nessim 1/11, 2017 at 18:53

Some archaeology on the source: web-archive-org.translate.goog/web/20121116231954/http://… – Asmara 16/5, 2022 at 19:57

Perhaps using the textDecoder will be sufficient.

Not supported in IE though.

var decoder = new TextDecoder('utf-8'),
    decodedMessage;

decodedMessage = decoder.decode(message.data);

Handling non-UTF8 text

In this example, we decode the Russian text "Привет, мир!", which means "Hello, world." In our TextDecoder() constructor, we specify the Windows-1251 character encoding, which is appropriate for Cyrillic script.

    let win1251decoder = new TextDecoder('windows-1251');
    let bytes = new Uint8Array([207, 240, 232, 226, 229, 242, 44, 32, 236, 232, 240, 33]);
    console.log(win1251decoder.decode(bytes)); // Привет, мир!

The interface for the TextDecoder is described here.

Retrieving a byte array from a string is equally simpel:

const decoder = new TextDecoder();
const encoder = new TextEncoder();

const byteArray = encoder.encode('Größe');
// converted it to a byte array

// now we can decode it back to a string if desired
console.log(decoder.decode(byteArray));

If you have it in a different encoding then you must compensate for that upon encoding. The parameter in the constructor for the TextEncoder is any one of the valid encodings listed here.

Playacting answered 17/11, 2016 at 9:53 Comment(7)

@ÁlvaroGonzález But it works and might be standard (future browsers will need to suport this too, okay?) – Diehl 2/2, 2017 at 13:24

Nowadays this is not experimental, has great support in all modern browsers, and is absolutely the right choice for everybody (unless you still have to support IE) – Erick 17/6, 2020 at 10:43

Where do i get the message.data from? – Negrito 15/1, 2021 at 21:10

@JamieHutber Perhaps you are looking for this?: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TextDecoder – Playacting 18/1, 2021 at 9:27

this does not work for strings, only array buffers. – Drupelet 15/2, 2021 at 10:19

@JuanVilar So you already have a string, that is encoded in a specific way, that you can then use in the textEncoder to convert it into a array buffer that you can then use to convert it into a string with the desired encoding. – Playacting 16/2, 2021 at 11:7

Decode with TextDecoder("utf-16") to half the string. In 16 bit javascript memory the upper byte is then used - so it halves the memory usage. But files is best with the default "utf-8" - it got bigger with "utf-16" when I compared the downloads. – Sulfapyrazine 21/7, 2023 at 1:14

Update @Albert's answer adding condition for emoji.

function Utf8ArrayToStr(array) {
    var out, i, len, c;
    var char2, char3, char4;

    out = "";
    len = array.length;
    i = 0;
    while(i < len) {
    c = array[i++];
    switch(c >> 4)
    { 
      case 0: case 1: case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: case 6: case 7:
        // 0xxxxxxx
        out += String.fromCharCode(c);
        break;
      case 12: case 13:
        // 110x xxxx   10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x1F) << 6) | (char2 & 0x3F));
        break;
      case 14:
        // 1110 xxxx  10xx xxxx  10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        char3 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCharCode(((c & 0x0F) << 12) |
                       ((char2 & 0x3F) << 6) |
                       ((char3 & 0x3F) << 0));
        break;
     case 15:
        // 1111 0xxx 10xx xxxx 10xx xxxx 10xx xxxx
        char2 = array[i++];
        char3 = array[i++];
        char4 = array[i++];
        out += String.fromCodePoint(((c & 0x07) << 18) | ((char2 & 0x3F) << 12) | ((char3 & 0x3F) << 6) | (char4 & 0x3F));

        break;
    }

    return out;
}

Uptodate answered 25/2, 2017 at 7:27 Comment(1)

Note: This works on a well formed UTF-8 input, but breaks without notice on some conditions: For example it assumes that there are correct number of bytes left, and that they are of correct continue sequence 0b10xxxxxx, and in case 15 it should only match 0b11110xxx or it can decode an illegal code point. – Rotator 5/2, 2020 at 15:35

Here is a solution handling all Unicode code points include upper (4 byte) values and supported by all modern browsers (IE and others > 5.5). It uses decodeURIComponent(), but NOT the deprecated escape/unescape functions:

function utf8_to_str(a) {
    for(var i=0, s=''; i<a.length; i++) {
        var h = a[i].toString(16)
        if(h.length < 2) h = '0' + h
        s += '%' + h
    }
    return decodeURIComponent(s)
}

Tested and available on GitHub

To create UTF-8 from a string:

function utf8_from_str(s) {
    for(var i=0, enc = encodeURIComponent(s), a = []; i < enc.length;) {
        if(enc[i] === '%') {
            a.push(parseInt(enc.substr(i+1, 2), 16))
            i += 3
        } else {
            a.push(enc.charCodeAt(i++))
        }
    }
    return a
}

Tested and available on GitHub

Censorious answered 15/2, 2017 at 5:35 Comment(1)

Would appreciate detailed specification of the arguments and results. Unicode confuses me terribly. – Gasp 5/9, 2019 at 17:23

This is what I found after a more specific Google search than just UTF-8 encode/decode. so for those who are looking for a converting library to convert between encodings, here you go.

https://github.com/inexorabletash/text-encoding

var uint8array = new TextEncoder().encode(str);
var str = new TextDecoder(encoding).decode(uint8array);

Paste from repo readme

All encodings from the Encoding specification are supported:

utf-8 ibm866 iso-8859-2 iso-8859-3 iso-8859-4 iso-8859-5 iso-8859-6 iso-8859-7 iso-8859-8 iso-8859-8-i iso-8859-10 iso-8859-13 iso-8859-14 iso-8859-15 iso-8859-16 koi8-r koi8-u macintosh windows-874 windows-1250 windows-1251 windows-1252 windows-1253 windows-1254 windows-1255 windows-1256 windows-1257 windows-1258 x-mac-cyrillic gb18030 hz-gb-2312 big5 euc-jp iso-2022-jp shift_jis euc-kr replacement utf-16be utf-16le x-user-defined

(Some encodings may be supported under other names, e.g. ascii, iso-8859-1, etc. See Encoding for additional labels for each encoding.)

Pipe answered 26/2, 2019 at 10:33 Comment(1)

This is best way work for me.thanks, for more info click developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TextDecoder/… – Nomarch 16/6, 2020 at 11:39

// String to Utf8 ByteBuffer

function strToUTF8(str){
  return Uint8Array.from(encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/%(..)/g,(m,v)=>{return String.fromCodePoint(parseInt(v,16))}), c=>c.codePointAt(0))
}

// Utf8 ByteArray to string

function UTF8toStr(ba){
  return decodeURIComponent(ba.reduce((p,c)=>{return p+'%'+c.toString(16),''}))
}

Backstop answered 13/4, 2018 at 16:39 Comment(2)

Could someone please test this? Also, please document the argument and return value in detail, to help those of us confused by Unicode. Thanks. – Gasp 5/9, 2019 at 17:24

not working for me – Haberdasher 25/5, 2022 at 19:48

@albert's solution was the closest I think but it can only parse up to 3 byte utf-8 characters

function utf8ArrayToStr(array) {
  var out, i, len, c;
  var char2, char3;

  out = "";
  len = array.length;
  i = 0;

  // XXX: Invalid bytes are ignored
  while(i < len) {
    c = array[i++];
    if (c >> 7 == 0) {
      // 0xxx xxxx
      out += String.fromCharCode(c);
      continue;
    }

    // Invalid starting byte
    if (c >> 6 == 0x02) {
      continue;
    }

    // #### MULTIBYTE ####
    // How many bytes left for thus character?
    var extraLength = null;
    if (c >> 5 == 0x06) {
      extraLength = 1;
    } else if (c >> 4 == 0x0e) {
      extraLength = 2;
    } else if (c >> 3 == 0x1e) {
      extraLength = 3;
    } else if (c >> 2 == 0x3e) {
      extraLength = 4;
    } else if (c >> 1 == 0x7e) {
      extraLength = 5;
    } else {
      continue;
    }

    // Do we have enough bytes in our data?
    if (i+extraLength > len) {
      var leftovers = array.slice(i-1);

      // If there is an invalid byte in the leftovers we might want to
      // continue from there.
      for (; i < len; i++) if (array[i] >> 6 != 0x02) break;
      if (i != len) continue;

      // All leftover bytes are valid.
      return {result: out, leftovers: leftovers};
    }
    // Remove the UTF-8 prefix from the char (res)
    var mask = (1 << (8 - extraLength - 1)) - 1,
        res = c & mask, nextChar, count;

    for (count = 0; count < extraLength; count++) {
      nextChar = array[i++];

      // Is the char valid multibyte part?
      if (nextChar >> 6 != 0x02) {break;};
      res = (res << 6) | (nextChar & 0x3f);
    }

    if (count != extraLength) {
      i--;
      continue;
    }

    if (res <= 0xffff) {
      out += String.fromCharCode(res);
      continue;
    }

    res -= 0x10000;
    var high = ((res >> 10) & 0x3ff) + 0xd800,
        low = (res & 0x3ff) + 0xdc00;
    out += String.fromCharCode(high, low);
  }

  return {result: out, leftovers: []};
}

This returns {result: "parsed string", leftovers: [list of invalid bytes at the end]} in case you are parsing the string in chunks.

EDIT: fixed the issue that @unhammer found.

Perak answered 21/1, 2016 at 14:50 Comment(3)

When I try this with [195,165] I get {"result":"","leftovers":[195, 165]} while @Albert's gives "å" – Grapheme 14/11, 2016 at 11:48

You are right, I fixed it in my project but not in this post. Sorry about my neglect. – Perak 14/11, 2016 at 17:49

No problem, seems to work now :-) Kinda funny that it already got two upvotes before anyone tested it though :-) Now utf8ArrayToStr([240,159,154,133]) gives me my "🚅" – Grapheme 15/11, 2016 at 8:36

Using my 1.6KB library, you can do

ToString(FromUTF8(Array.from(usernameReceived)))

Labour answered 24/1, 2019 at 13:45 Comment(0)

This is a solution with extensive error reporting.

It would take an UTF-8 encoded byte array (where byte array is represented as array of numbers and each number is an integer between 0 and 255 inclusive) and will produce a JavaScript string of Unicode characters.

function getNextByte(value, startByteIndex, startBitsStr, 
                     additional, index) 
{
    if (index >= value.length) {
        var startByte = value[startByteIndex];
        throw new Error("Invalid UTF-8 sequence. Byte " + startByteIndex 
            + " with value " + startByte + " (" + String.fromCharCode(startByte) 
            + "; binary: " + toBinary(startByte)
            + ") starts with " + startBitsStr + " in binary and thus requires " 
            + additional + " bytes after it, but we only have " 
            + (value.length - startByteIndex) + ".");
    }
    var byteValue = value[index];
    checkNextByteFormat(value, startByteIndex, startBitsStr, additional, index);
    return byteValue;
}

function checkNextByteFormat(value, startByteIndex, startBitsStr, 
                             additional, index) 
{
    if ((value[index] & 0xC0) != 0x80) {
        var startByte = value[startByteIndex];
        var wrongByte = value[index];
        throw new Error("Invalid UTF-8 byte sequence. Byte " + startByteIndex 
             + " with value " + startByte + " (" +String.fromCharCode(startByte) 
             + "; binary: " + toBinary(startByte) + ") starts with " 
             + startBitsStr + " in binary and thus requires " + additional 
             + " additional bytes, each of which shouls start with 10 in binary."
             + " However byte " + (index - startByteIndex) 
             + " after it with value " + wrongByte + " (" 
             + String.fromCharCode(wrongByte) + "; binary: " + toBinary(wrongByte)
             +") does not start with 10 in binary.");
    }
}

function fromUtf8 (str) {
        var value = [];
        var destIndex = 0;
        for (var index = 0; index < str.length; index++) {
            var code = str.charCodeAt(index);
            if (code <= 0x7F) {
                value[destIndex++] = code;
            } else if (code <= 0x7FF) {
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 6 ) & 0x1F) | 0xC0;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 0 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
            } else if (code <= 0xFFFF) {
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 12) & 0x0F) | 0xE0;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 6 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 0 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
            } else if (code <= 0x1FFFFF) {
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 18) & 0x07) | 0xF0;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 12) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 6 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 0 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
            } else if (code <= 0x03FFFFFF) {
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 24) & 0x03) | 0xF0;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 18) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 12) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 6 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 0 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
            } else if (code <= 0x7FFFFFFF) {
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 30) & 0x01) | 0xFC;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 24) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 18) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 12) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 6 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
                value[destIndex++] = ((code >> 0 ) & 0x3F) | 0x80;
            } else {
                throw new Error("Unsupported Unicode character \"" 
                    + str.charAt(index) + "\" with code " + code + " (binary: " 
                    + toBinary(code) + ") at index " + index
                    + ". Cannot represent it as UTF-8 byte sequence.");
            }
        }
        return value;
    }

Breedlove answered 27/3, 2020 at 19:27 Comment(0)

You should take decodeURI for it.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/decodeURI

As simple as this:

decodeURI('https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/JavaScript_%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BB%D1%8B');
// "https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/JavaScript_шеллы"

Consider to use it inside try catch block for not missing an URIError.

Also it has full browsers support.

Kp answered 24/9, 2020 at 2:11 Comment(0)

const decoder = new TextDecoder();
console.log(decoder.decode(new Uint8Array([97])));

MDN resource link

Coparcener answered 21/4, 2022 at 0:4 Comment(0)

I reckon the easiest way would be to use a built-in js functions decodeURI() / encodeURI().

function (usernameSent) {
  var usernameEncoded = usernameSent; // Current value: utf8
  var usernameDecoded = decodeURI(usernameReceived);  // Decoded
  // do stuff
}

Endplay answered 2/3, 2018 at 16:26 Comment(1)

Sounds easy. Too easy. Did you test this? – Gasp 5/9, 2019 at 17:27

-3

I searched for a simple solution and this works well for me:

//input data
view = new Uint8Array(data);

//output string
serialString = ua2text(view);

//convert UTF8 to string
function ua2text(ua) {
    s = "";
    for (var i = 0; i < ua.length; i++) {
        s += String.fromCharCode(ua[i]);
    }
    return s;               
}

Only issue I have is sometimes I get one character at a time. This might be by design with my source of the arraybuffer. I'm using https://github.com/xseignard/cordovarduino to read serial data on an android device.

Duhamel answered 12/8, 2015 at 13:41 Comment(1)

This does not actually decode UTF-8. For example, C3 BC should be decoded as ü, but your answer returns Ã¼. – Millsap 2/1, 2016 at 14:19

-3

Preferably, as others have suggested, use the Encoding API. But if you need to support IE (for some strange reason) MDN recommends this repo FastestSmallestTextEncoderDecoder

If you need to make use of the polyfill library:

    import {encode, decode} from "fastestsmallesttextencoderdecoder";

Then (regardless of the polyfill) for encoding and decoding:

    // takes in USVString and returns a Uint8Array object
    const encoded = new TextEncoder().encode('€')
    console.log(encoded);

    // takes in an ArrayBuffer or an ArrayBufferView and returns a DOMString
    const decoded = new TextDecoder().decode(encoded);
    console.log(decoded);

Caricature answered 5/5, 2021 at 20:2 Comment(1)

A link to a solution is welcome, but please ensure your answer is useful without it: add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it is there, then quote the most relevant part of the page you are linking to in case the target page is unavailable. Answers that are little more than a link may be deleted. – Voelker 6/5, 2021 at 0:3

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