'UTF8' is not a supported encoding name

Question

So I'm just playing around with Spotify's Web API and I'm trying to access my top played tracks. Although I've encountered a problem I've been trying to solve for a couple of hours now but I can't find an answer.

When I try to deserialize my response, I get the follwing error:

'UTF8' is not a supported encoding name. For information on defining a custom encoding, see the documentation for the Encoding.RegisterProvider method. Parameter name: name The character set provided in ContentType is invalid. Cannot read content as string using an invalid character set.

The ContentType is application/json; charset=UTF8

Any ideas?

Here's my request code:

private static HttpClient GetHttpClient()
{
    HttpClientHandler handler = new HttpClientHandler() {
        AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate
    };
    var httpClient = new HttpClient(handler);
    httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Accept", "application/json");
    return httpClient;
}

public async Task<SearchArtistResponse> GetSelfTopAsync(string type, string userName)
{
    var httpClient = GetHttpClient();
    httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", GetAccessToken(userName));

    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append(ApiUrl);
    sb.Append($"/me/top/{type}");
    var query = sb.ToString();
    var response = await httpClient.GetAsync(query);

    var spotifyResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SearchArtistResponse>(await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());
    return spotifyResponse;
}

Extradite

I think this is just a bug in the Spotify Web API, sending charset=UTF8 instead of charset=utf-8 for this endpoint. It is filed here: github.com/spotify/web-api/issues/291 – Bast

I solved a similar problem by specifying the proxy. – Denounce

You could just read it in advance and then fix the error before giving it to the deserializer... – Acoustics

Answer 1

Are you using .net core?

You will need to add the following code to make the encodings available in .NET desktop available in your environment:

System.Text.EncodingProvider provider = System.Text.CodePagesEncodingProvider.Instance;
Encoding.RegisterProvider(provider);

More info on CodePagesEncodingProvider.Instance can be found here.

Pistachio

No, I'm using .NET 4.5 @Sephr – Extradite

So that's not the case... anyone else? – Extradite

This fixes all encoding errors except of : System.ArgumentException: ''iso-2022-cn' is not a supported encoding name. For information on defining a custom encoding, see the documentation for the Encoding.RegisterProvider method.' – Arri

This solved an encoding error I was receiving when using an external .dll that was throwing an encoding error – Quasimodo

Fixed the problem here. – Grondin

after adding this line , httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync() also works automatically for encoding like windows-1252 which was throwing exception before that and there is no need to add byte array logic extraction and then converting directly using specific encoding. – Delinda

Answer 2

The problem should be a validation of response header Content-Type ,that occur when you call ReadAsStringAsync(), if you call ReadAsByteArrayAsync() instead and parse to string

(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString())

that will gonna work!!!

Trixy

Might be best to actually check for that "UTF8" string in the bytes you receive to ensure it's meant to be UTF-8, and only fix it if you need to fix it. – Acoustics

There is also Encoding.WebName, that might be even more exact in this case – Orthorhombic

You made my day :) – Sino

Answer 3

I had a same problem while I was trying to get an answer from my API which is built in PHP using C# service. I could fix the issue by changing "charset=UTF8" to "charset=\"UTF-8\"" on the PHP side(the api that sends result to the C# service). Hope this helps someone.

Radie