#35241 [Opn->Bgs]: wddx deserialization problems with utf-8 data

ID: 35241 Updated by: iliaa@php.net Reported By: mikx at mikx dot de -Status: Open +Status: Bogus Bug Type: WDDX related Operating System: Linux, Windows PHP Version: 5CVS-2005-11-16 (snap) New Comment: To handle UTF data you need to use utf8_encode() function on the data itself and add xml header identifying the data as being UTF8. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-11-16 16:07:59] mikx at mikx dot de Tried the snapshot for Windows you linked to (PHP Version 5.1.0RC5-dev). Result for the testcase is exactly the same as with 5.0.5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-11-16 15:53:55] tony2001@php.net Please try using this CVS snapshot: http://snaps.php.net/php5-latest.tar.gz For Windows: http://snaps.php.net/win32/php5-win32-latest.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-11-16 15:20:42] mikx at mikx dot de Description: ------------ It seems the behavior of wddx_deserialize is inconsistent or at least unpredictable based on the given documentation. Not only between PHP 4 and 5, also based on the given packet data. I am not sure if this is a bug or expected behavior. I am aware of bug #34928 - so please don't just treat this as bogus. The following script behaves as described on PHP 5.0.5 on Windows and 5.0.4 on Linux (currently i have no 5.0.5 Linux testcase available) and PHP 4.3.9 on Linux. At least the windows version is a complete default installation. Please clearify what wddx serialize and deserialize exactly do (encoding), why the documentation encourages to add an additional utf8_encode to non-ascii characters on serialize and how the entire process can be influenced (e.g. which configs get used). setlocale() and putenv("locale=xyz") have no effect. Currently wddx_serialize adds no character set information and keeps whatever you supply as a string inside the resulting wddx file. So if you send an extended character in ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8 it will be the same in the resulting wddx packet. The deserializer seems to always convert the packet to ISO-8859-1 unless you explicitly set information in the XML file that it is already ISO-8859-1 (even if there is UTF-8 content in it). If the documentation entry to always utf8_encode a string before sending it to serialize is correct, it would mean you would have to double encode an UTF-8 string. But that seems like a dirty workaround. From my perspective both wddx_serialize and wddx_deserialize should add/respect the information to the XML file and get an additional parameter to enforce an input or output encoding or overwrite the default behavior. Currently i try to deserialize wddx packets produced with PHP4 in PHP5. They are stored in a database, firstly in MySQL4 (latin1 encoded) and now migrated to MySQL5 (utf8 encoded). What is the proper way to handle that? utf8_encode the packet (producing a double encoded packet) before sending to wddx_deserialize (which implicitly adds a utf8_decode on that data) seems like an evil hack in a undocumented area. This seems like a common migration path to me, so please specifiy clearly what to expect and what to do. Reproduce code: --------------- <?php header("Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8"); echo "ISO-8859-1 specified, ISO-8859-1 data<br>"; echo "produces latin1 output [php5]<br>"; echo "produces ISO-8859-1 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?><wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>abc-äöü</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>"; echo "UTF-8 specified, ISO-8859-1 data<br>"; echo "non-ascii characters get stripped [php5]<br>"; echo "produces ISO-8859-1 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>abc-äöü</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>";; echo "Nothing specified, ISO-8859-1 data<br>"; echo "non-ascii characters get stripped [php5]<br>"; echo "produces ISO-8859-1 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>abc-äöü</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>";; echo "ISO-8859-1 specified, UTF-8 data<br>"; echo "produces utf-8 output [php5]<br>"; echo "produces UTF-8 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?><wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>".utf8_encode("abc-äöü")."</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>";; echo "UTF-8 specified, UTF-8 data<br>"; echo "produces latin1 output [php5]<br>"; echo "produces UTF-8 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>".utf8_encode("abc-äöü")."</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>";; echo "Nothing specified, UTF-8 data<br>"; echo "produces latin1 output [php5]<br>"; echo "produces UTF-8 output [php4]<br>"; echo wddx_deserialize("<wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><string>".utf8_encode("abc-äöü")."</string></data></wddxPacket>")."<hr>";; ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=35241&edit=1