Charset PureBasic Reference Documentation

Charset

Current Version: 9.5.0.98

Requires Chilkat Bundle License

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

obj.i = CkCharset::ckCreate()

; Make sure to dispose of the object when finished like this:
CkCharset::ckDispose(obj);

Properties

AltToCharset

Declare.s ckAltToCharset(obj.i)
Declare setCkAltToCharset(obj.i, value.s)

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.

DebugLogFilePath

Declare.s ckDebugLogFilePath(obj.i)
Declare setCkDebugLogFilePath(obj.i, value.s)

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:

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

More Information and Examples

Example showing how to use DebugLogFilePath.

ErrorAction

Declare.i ckErrorAction(obj.i)
Declare setCkErrorAction(obj.i, value.i)

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.

FromCharset

Declare.s ckFromCharset(obj.i)
Declare setCkFromCharset(obj.i, value.s)

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>

LastErrorHtml

Declare.s ckLastErrorHtml(obj.i) ; (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.

LastErrorText

Declare.s ckLastErrorText(obj.i) ; (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.

More Information and Examples

Concept of LastErrorText LastErrorText Standard Information

LastErrorXml

Declare.s ckLastErrorXml(obj.i) ; (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.

LastInputAsHex

Declare.s ckLastInputAsHex(obj.i) ; (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.

LastInputAsQP

Declare.s ckLastInputAsQP(obj.i) ; (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.

LastMethodSuccess

Declare.i ckLastMethodSuccess(obj.i)
Declare setCkLastMethodSuccess(obj.i, value.i)

Indicate whether the last method call succeeded or failed. A value of 1 indicates success, a value of 0 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 = 1 and failure = 0.
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 1. For example, a method that returns no value (such as a "void" in C++) will technically always succeed.

LastOutputAsHex

Declare.s ckLastOutputAsHex(obj.i) ; (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.

LastOutputAsQP

Declare.s ckLastOutputAsQP(obj.i) ; (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.

SaveLast

Declare.i ckSaveLast(obj.i)
Declare setCkSaveLast(obj.i, value.i)

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)

ToCharset

Declare.s ckToCharset(obj.i)
Declare setCkToCharset(obj.i, value.s)

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>

VerboseLogging

Declare.i ckVerboseLogging(obj.i)
Declare setCkVerboseLogging(obj.i, value.i)

If set to 1, then the contents of LastErrorText (or LastErrorXml, or LastErrorHtml) may contain more verbose information. The default value is 0. Verbose logging should only be used for debugging. The potentially large quantity of logged information may adversely affect peformance.

Version

Declare.s ckVersion(obj.i) ; (read-only)

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

More Information and Examples

How to get the Chilkat version at runtime.

Methods

CharsetToCodePage

Declare.i ckCharsetToCodePage(obj.i, charsetName.s)

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

CodePageToCharset

Declare.s ckCodePageToCharset(obj.i, codePage.l)

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

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

ConvertFile

Declare.i ckConvertFile(obj.i, inPath.s, destPath.s)

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 1 for success, 0 for failure.

More Information and Examples

Convert a File's Character Encoding from UTF-8 to UFT-8-BOM

ConvertFileNoPreamble

Declare.i ckConvertFileNoPreamble(obj.i, inPath.s, destPath.s)

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.

ConvertHtmlFile

Declare.i ckConvertHtmlFile(obj.i, inPath.s, destPath.s)

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 1 for success, 0 for failure.

EntityEncodeDec

Declare.s ckEntityEncodeDec(obj.i, str.s)

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

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

EntityEncodeHex

Declare.s ckEntityEncodeHex(obj.i, str.s)

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

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

GetHtmlFileCharset

Declare.s ckGetHtmlFileCharset(obj.i, htmlFilePath.s)

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

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

HtmlDecodeToStr

Declare.s ckHtmlDecodeToStr(obj.i, inStr.s)

Converts HTML entities to Unicode characters.

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

HtmlEntityDecodeFile

Declare.i ckHtmlEntityDecodeFile(obj.i, inPath.s, destPath.s)

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 < , å , å , 水 , Í , etc.

Returns 1 for success, 0 for failure.

LowerCase

Declare.s ckLowerCase(obj.i, inStr.s)

Converts a string to lowercase.

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

ReadFileToString

Declare.s ckReadFileToString(obj.i, path.s, charset.s)

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 an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

SetErrorString

Declare ckSetErrorString(obj.i, str.s, charset.s)

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.

UnlockComponent

Declare.i ckUnlockComponent(obj.i, unlockCode.s)

Unlocks the component. This method must be called once at the beginning of the program. Properties can be get/set without unlocking, but methods will not work unless the component has been unlocked.

Returns 1 for success, 0 for failure.

More Information and Examples

Diagnosing UnlockComponent Problems UnlockComponent LastErrorText shows exact string passed to it.Verify UnlockComponent Success w/ Purchased Unlock Code LastErrorText Standard Information

UpperCase

Declare.s ckUpperCase(obj.i, inStr.s)

Converts a string to uppercase.

Returns an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

UrlDecodeStr

Declare.s ckUrlDecodeStr(obj.i, inStr.s)

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 an empty string on failure. Use the LastMethodSuccess property to check for success.

VerifyFile

Declare.i ckVerifyFile(obj.i, charset.s, path.s)

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

WriteStringToFile

Declare.i ckWriteStringToFile(obj.i, textData.s, path.s, charset.s)

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 1 for success, 0 for failure.