Charset Lianja Reference Documentation

Charset

Current Version: 10.0.0

A component/class for converting character data from one encoding to another. This software is unique in that the data required for converting to/from the supported charsets is entirely embedded witin the Chilkat DLL/library. It does not depend on what code pages may or may not be installed on a particular computer. This allows programs to operate correctly regardless of the locale, OS version, or other factors.

Object Creation

loObject = createobject("CkCharset")

Properties

AltToCharset
AltToCharset As Character

If the ErrorAction property is set to 6, then this property controls how errors are handled. It specifies an alternate "To" charset. When a character in the input data cannot be converted to the target charset, an attempt is made to convert it to the AltToCharset. If that fails, the input character is dropped.

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DebugLogFilePath
DebugLogFilePath As Character

If set to a file path, causes each Chilkat method or property call to automatically append it's LastErrorText to the specified log file. The information is appended such that if a hang or crash occurs, it is possible to see the context in which the problem occurred, as well as a history of all Chilkat calls up to the point of the problem. The VerboseLogging property can be set to provide more detailed information.

This property is typically used for debugging the rare cases where a Chilkat method call hangs or generates an exception that halts program execution (i.e. crashes). A hang or crash should generally never happen. The typical causes of a hang are:

  1. a timeout related property was set to 0 to explicitly indicate that an infinite timeout is desired,
  2. the hang is actually a hang within an event callback (i.e. it is a hang within the application code), or
  3. there is an internal problem (bug) in the Chilkat code that causes the hang.

More Information and Examples
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ErrorAction
ErrorAction As Numeric

Controls how errors are handled. When a character in the input data cannot be converted to the target charset, the action taken is controlled by this property. The possible settings are: (0) drop the error characters, (1) substitute the data set by the SetErrorBytes or SetErrorString method, (2) convert to a hex-escaped string (&#xXXXX), (3) RESERVED, (4) RESERVED, (5) RESERVED, (6) convert the error character to the AltToCharset instead, if that fails then drop the character, (7) Pass non-convertible characters to the output unchanged.

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FromCharset
FromCharset As Character

Tells the charset converter the charset of the input data for a conversion. Possible values are:

<font size="2" face="MS Sans Serif">
us-ascii
unicode  (also known as UTF16LE or simply UTF16)
unicodefffe  (also known as UTF16BE)
ebcdic
iso-8859-1
iso-8859-2
iso-8859-3
iso-8859-4
iso-8859-5
iso-8859-6
iso-8859-7
iso-8859-8
iso-8859-9
iso-8859-13
iso-8859-15
windows-874
windows-1250
windows-1251
windows-1252
windows-1253
windows-1254
windows-1255
windows-1256
windows-1257
windows-1258
utf-7
utf-8
utf-32
utf-32be
shift_jis
gb2312
ks_c_5601-1987
big5
iso-2022-jp
iso-2022-kr
euc-jp
euc-kr
macintosh
x-mac-japanese
x-mac-chinesetrad
x-mac-korean
x-mac-arabic
x-mac-hebrew
x-mac-greek
x-mac-cyrillic
x-mac-chinesesimp
x-mac-romanian
x-mac-ukrainian
x-mac-thai
x-mac-ce
x-mac-icelandic
x-mac-turkish
x-mac-croatian
asmo-708
dos-720
dos-862
ibm01140
ibm01141
ibm01142
ibm01143
ibm01144
ibm01145
ibm01146
ibm01147
ibm01148
ibm01149
ibm037
ibm437
ibm500
ibm737
ibm775
ibm850
ibm852
ibm855
ibm857
ibm00858
ibm860
ibm861
ibm863
ibm864
ibm865
cp866
ibm869
ibm870
cp875
koi8-r
koi8-u
</font>

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LastErrorHtml
LastErrorHtml As Character (read-only)

Provides information in HTML format about the last method/property called. If a method call returns a value indicating failure, or behaves unexpectedly, examine this property to get more information.

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LastErrorText
LastErrorText As Character (read-only)

Provides information in plain-text format about the last method/property called. If a method call returns a value indicating failure, or behaves unexpectedly, examine this property to get more information.

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LastErrorXml
LastErrorXml As Character (read-only)

Provides information in XML format about the last method/property called. If a method call returns a value indicating failure, or behaves unexpectedly, examine this property to get more information.

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LastInputAsHex
LastInputAsHex As Character (read-only)

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last input data in a hexidecimalized string.

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LastInputAsQP
LastInputAsQP As Character (read-only)

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last input data in a quoted-printable string.

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LastMethodSuccess
LastMethodSuccess As Boolean

Indicate whether the last method call succeeded or failed. A value of .T. indicates success, a value of .F. indicates failure. This property is automatically set for method calls. It is not modified by property accesses. The property is automatically set to indicate success for the following types of method calls:

  • Any method that returns a string.
  • Any method returning a Chilkat object, binary bytes, or a date/time.
  • Any method returning a standard boolean status value where success = .T. and failure = .F..
  • Any method returning an integer where failure is defined by a return value less than zero.

Note: Methods that do not fit the above requirements will always set this property equal to .T.. For example, a method that returns no value (such as a "void" in C++) will technically always succeed.

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LastOutputAsHex
LastOutputAsHex As Character (read-only)

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last output data in a hexidecimalized string.

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LastOutputAsQP
LastOutputAsQP As Character (read-only)

If SaveLast is set to true, then the input and output of a conversion is saved to allow the exact bytes that are sent to the converter to be seen (for debugging purposes). This property shows the last output data in a quoted-printable string.

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SaveLast
SaveLast As Boolean

Tells the component to keep the input/output byte data in memory after a conversion is complete so the data can be examined via the LastInputAsHex/QP and LastOutputAsHex/QP properties. (for debugging purposes)

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ToCharset
ToCharset As Character

Tells the charset converter the target charset for a conversion. Possible values are:

<font size="2" face="MS Sans Serif">
us-ascii
unicode  (also known as UTF16LE or simply UTF16)
unicodefffe  (also known as UTF16BE)
ebcdic
iso-8859-1
iso-8859-2
iso-8859-3
iso-8859-4
iso-8859-5
iso-8859-6
iso-8859-7
iso-8859-8
iso-8859-9
iso-8859-13
iso-8859-15
windows-874
windows-1250
windows-1251
windows-1252
windows-1253
windows-1254
windows-1255
windows-1256
windows-1257
windows-1258
utf-7
utf-8
utf-32
utf-32be
shift_jis
gb2312
ks_c_5601-1987
big5
iso-2022-jp
iso-2022-kr
euc-jp
euc-kr
macintosh
x-mac-japanese
x-mac-chinesetrad
x-mac-korean
x-mac-arabic
x-mac-hebrew
x-mac-greek
x-mac-cyrillic
x-mac-chinesesimp
x-mac-romanian
x-mac-ukrainian
x-mac-thai
x-mac-ce
x-mac-icelandic
x-mac-turkish
x-mac-croatian
asmo-708
dos-720
dos-862
ibm01140
ibm01141
ibm01142
ibm01143
ibm01144
ibm01145
ibm01146
ibm01147
ibm01148
ibm01149
ibm037
ibm437
ibm500
ibm737
ibm775
ibm850
ibm852
ibm855
ibm857
ibm00858
ibm860
ibm861
ibm863
ibm864
ibm865
cp866
ibm869
ibm870
cp875
koi8-r
koi8-u
</font>

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VerboseLogging
VerboseLogging As Boolean

If set to .T., then the contents of LastErrorText (or LastErrorXml, or LastErrorHtml) may contain more verbose information. The default value is .F.. Verbose logging should only be used for debugging. The potentially large quantity of logged information may adversely affect peformance.

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Version
Version As Character (read-only)

Version of the component/library, such as "9.5.0.94"

More Information and Examples
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Methods

CharsetToCodePage
CharsetToCodePage(charsetName As Character) As Numeric

Converts a charset name to a code page number. For example, "iso-8859-1" converts to code page 28591.

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CodePageToCharset
CodePageToCharset(codePage As Numeric) As Character

Converts a code page number to a charset name. For example, 65001 converts to "utf-8".

Returns .F. on failure

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ConvertFile
ConvertFile(inPath As Character, destPath As Character) As Boolean

Converts a file from one character encoding to another. The FromCharset and ToCharset properties specify the source and destination character encodings. If the ToCharset is utf-16 or utf-8, then the preamble (also known as BOM) is included in the output. (Call ConvertFileNoPreamble to suppress the output of the BOM.)

Returns .T. for success, .F. for failure.

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ConvertFileNoPreamble
ConvertFileNoPreamble(inPath As Character, destPath As Character) As Boolean

Converts a file from one character encoding to another. The FromCharset and ToCharset properties specify the source and destination character encodings. No preamble (also known as BOM) is included in the output.

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ConvertHtmlFile
ConvertHtmlFile(inPath As Character, destPath As Character) As Boolean

Converts an HTML file from one character encoding to another. The ToCharset properties must be set prior to calling this method. If the FromCharset is not set, it is obtained from the HTML META tag that indicates the charset. This method automatically edits the META tag within the HTML that indicates the charset.

Returns .T. for success, .F. for failure.

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EntityEncodeDec
EntityEncodeDec(str As Character) As Character

Converts non-US-ASCII characters to Unicode decimal entities (&#xxxxx;)

Returns .F. on failure

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EntityEncodeHex
EntityEncodeHex(str As Character) As Character

Converts non-US-ASCII characters to Unicode hex entities (&#xXXXX;)

Returns .F. on failure

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GetHtmlFileCharset
GetHtmlFileCharset(htmlFilePath As Character) As Character

Examines an HTML file and extracts the charset name specified by the META tag, if present.

Returns .F. on failure

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HtmlDecodeToStr
HtmlDecodeToStr(inStr As Character) As Character

Converts HTML entities to Unicode characters.

Returns .F. on failure

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HtmlEntityDecodeFile
HtmlEntityDecodeFile(inPath As Character, destPath As Character) As Boolean

Decodes HTML entities in a file and creates a new HTML file with the entities decoded. See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html for information on HTML entities. Examples of HTML entities are &lt; , &#229; , &#xE5; , &#x6C34; , &Iacute; , etc.

Returns .T. for success, .F. for failure.

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LowerCase
LowerCase(inStr As Character) As Character

Converts a string to lowercase.

Returns .F. on failure

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ReadFileToString
ReadFileToString(path As Character, charset As Character) As Character

Reads a text file and returns the text converted to a Unicode string. The filename is specified by the first method argument, and the charset of the text data is specified by the 2nd method argument.

Returns .F. on failure

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SetErrorString
SetErrorString(str As Character, charset As Character)

If the ErrorAction property is set to 1, the string passed to this method is used as the result for any characters that cannot be converted during a conversion.

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UpperCase
UpperCase(inStr As Character) As Character

Converts a string to uppercase.

Returns .F. on failure

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UrlDecodeStr
UrlDecodeStr(inStr As Character) As Character

URL decodes a string.

This method assumes the ANSI byte representation was used for encoding. For example, the letter É, where the ANSI charset is Latin-1, would appear as "%C9" when URL encoded. (As opposed to the utf-8 encoding where É is represented by 2 bytes 0xC3, 0x89 and would appear as "%C3%89" when URl encoded. This method assumes ANSI encoding.

You can use encoding/decoding methods in Chilkat's StringBuilder class to specify the charset from which to decode or encode.

Returns .F. on failure

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VerifyFile
VerifyFile(charset As Character, path As Character) As Boolean

Returns true if the file contains character data that conforms to the charset passed in the 1st argument.

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WriteStringToFile
WriteStringToFile(textData As Character, path As Character, charset As Character) As Boolean

Converts a Unicode string to a multibyte charset and writes the multibyte text data to a file. The destination charset is specified in the 2nd method argument.

Returns .T. for success, .F. for failure.

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