Rails 4.2 - how to fix ascii code in CSV exporting without gem 'iconv'?

Question

When exporting csv in Rails 4.2 app, there are ascii code in the csv output for Chinese characters (UTF8):

ä¸åˆåŒç†Šå·¥ç‰ç”¨é¤

We tried options in send_data without luck:

send_data @payment_requests.to_csv, :type => 'text/csv; charset=utf-8; header=present'

And:

send_data @payment_requests.to_csv.force_encoding("UTF-8")

In model, there is forced encoding utf8:

# encoding: utf-8

But it does not work. There are online posts talking about use gem iconv. However iconv depends on the platform's ruby version. Is there cleaner solution to fix the ascii in Rails 4.2 csv exporting?

`@FrederickCheung`, I believe it is utf8 as Rails 4 default. There is a similar exporting method we used in Rails 3 app and Chinese characters were displayed correctly. — user938363, Apr 21 '15 at 17:08
Those ASCII chars, are they shown by the browser or in an file editor? — Jörg Reichardt, Apr 23 '15 at 22:07
I don't think you'll get any further without sharing the code that generates the csv. — Frederick Cheung, Apr 24 '15 at 12:41
what does `@payment_requests.to_csv.encoding` say and how is the text generated/loaded? — Dieter Pisarewski, Apr 27 '15 at 13:44
What are you opening the .csv in? Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9639153/character-encoding-issue-exporting-rails-data-to-csv — Ian M, Apr 29 '15 at 23:17

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 27 '15 at 13:52

If @payment_requests.to_csv includes ASCII text, then you should use encode method:

@payment_requests.to_csv.encode("UTF-8")

or

@payment_requests.to_csv.force_encoding("ASCII").encode("UTF-8")

depending on which internal encoding @payment_requests.to_csv has.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '15 at 00:23

1

You can try:

@payment_requests.to_csv.force_encoding("ISO-8859-1")

answered Apr 21 '15 at 00:23

dx7

804
5
11

No luck. even though it is a clean one. – user938363 Apr 21 '15 at 01:48
Chinese characters? Maybe you need use UTF-8 instead of ISO-8859-1. – dx7 Apr 21 '15 at 01:49
I recall that default char set of Rails is uft8. The same piece of code exports right csv file for Chinese characters. However it does not in Rails 4.2. – user938363 Apr 21 '15 at 02:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 12 '16 at 08:27

1

for Chinese characters

CSV.generate(options) do |csv|
  csv << column_names
  all.each do |product|
    csv << product.attributes.values_at(*column_names)
  end
end.encode('gb2312', :invalid => :replace, :undef => :replace, :replace => "?")

answered Jan 12 '16 at 08:27

Alan Wang

552
6
15

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 29 '16 at 22:19

0

This is what worked for me:

head = 'EF BB BF'.split(' ').map{|a|a.hex.chr}.join()

csv_str = CSV.generate(csv = head) do |csv|
  csv << [ , , , ...]
  @elements.each do |element|
    csv << [ , , , ...]
  end
end

answered Aug 29 '16 at 22:19

Kryptman

996
9
14

Rails 4.2 - how to fix ascii code in CSV exporting without gem 'iconv'?

4 Answers4