ANSWER :
Sorry about the this sort of question guys, I assumed that it wouldn't work if I directly enter the special character into my string in query but it does. so all you need to do is locate the special character, copy it and paste it into your query and it works :)
folks,
QUESTION CHANGED:
I want to enter a ascii character in the database which is the standard trademark symbol (®) using a direct query and have it read correctly ! how can i do this ?
PREVIOUS QUESTION:
how can i enter a special character in SQL Server in varchar column... ® (there is also a line below this symbol which I am unable to paste here) so that it is read correctly.
Also, I am unable to find the character sequence for that symbol any places where I can look for ?
The symbol is standard ® symbol which hangs on the top and there is a line below it just like an underscore.
Thanks
EDIT 1: I am talking about a direct query to the database.
You can use this T-SQL query:
INSERT INTO dbo.YourTable(UnicodeCol)
VALUES(nchar(0x00AE))
® is the Unicode character with code 0x00AE
But of course - since this is a Unicode character, the column you're inserting into must be of type NVARCHAR (not VARCHAR)
You can convert it to Unicode NCR format before you store to database, or just encode it with related functions of the language you are using , like JavaScript's encodeuricomponent, PHP's urlencode.
You can use 'N' ahead of data.
This query might be helpful to you.
insert into product_master(product_name) values(N'कंप्यूटर')
Related
Im querying an oracle DB with robotframework-databaselibrary's Query method.
The result contains question marks (?) instead of the actual characters in case of cyrillic characters. If I run the same query using SQL Developer the results are fine.
The character encoding in the DB is CL8MSWIN1251.
I tried using Oracle's CONVERT function to convert the result to CL8MSWIN1251 before returning. Like this
convert(b.surname,'CL8MSWIN1251') AS surname
I tried decoding the result string in robotframework using Decode String to Bytes but it does not support the above mentioned encoding.
#{queryResults}= Query ${sqlQuery}
Log List ${queryResults}
I expect the output to be some cyrillic characters and the actual result is something like this ??????
#kfinity comment helped me to solve this issue.
I had to set the NLS_LANG environment variable to RUSSIAN_CIS.CL8MSWIN1251.
This solved the issue that the query returned question marks.
After this I used the following code to turn the bytes into the appropriate characters
${string}= Decode Bytes To String ${bytes} windows-1251
I'm trying to insert some XML into a SQL Server database table which uses column type XML.
This works fine most of the time, but one user submitted some XML with the character with hex value 3, and SQL Server gave the error "hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character."
Now I want to check, and remove, any invalid XML characters before doing the insert, and there are various articles suggesting how invalid XML characters can be replaced using regex or something similar.
However, the problem for me is that the user submitted the XML document with the invalid character escaped i.e. "", and none of the methods I've found will detect this. This is also why the error was not detected earlier: it's only when inserting it into the SQL database that the problem occurs.
Has anyone written a function that will check for all escaped invalid XML characters? I suppose the character above could have been written as or , or lots of other ways, so it's quite hard to catch them all.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
You could try importing the XML to a temporary varchar(max) variable or table column and use REPLACE to strip out the offending characters, then insert the cleansed string into the destination CASTing it to XML
Any idea why the Turkish Lira symbol is replaced by a question mark when I insert it in a table in the database. See the image below
This is not a font issue. This is a Unicode (UTF-16) vs 8-bit Code Page character set issue (i.e. NVARCHAR vs VARCHAR). The character you are trying to use does not exist in the particular Code Page indicated by the default Collation of the DB in which you are executing this query. The Code Page used by the DB's default Collation is relevant here since your string literal is not prefixed with an upper-case "N". If it was, then the string would be interpreted as being Unicode and no conversion would take place. But since you are passing in a non-Unicode string, it will be forced into the current DB's default Collation's Code Page as the query is parsed. Any characters not available in that Code Page, and not having a Best-fit mapping, get turned into "?".
You can run the following to see for yourself:
SELECT '₺';
PRINT '₺';
It both prints AND displays in the results grid as ?
If you want to see what character SQL Server thinks it is, run the following:
SELECT ASCII('₺');
And it will return: 63
If you want to see what character has an ASCII value of 63, run this:
SELECT CHAR(63);
And it will return: ?
Now run this:
SELECT N'₺';
PRINT N'₺';
This will both print and display in the results grid correctly.
To see what character value the symbol really is, run the following:
SELECT UNICODE(N'₺'), UNICODE('₺');
This will return: 8378 and 63
But isn't 63 the question mark? Yes. That is because not prefixing the string literal '₺' with a capital "N" tells SQL Server that it is VARCHAR and so it gets translated to the default unknown character.
Now, if you were to execute this VARCHAR version in a DB that had a Collation tied to a Code Page that had this character, then it would work even when not prefixing the string literal with an upper-case "N". However, at the moment, I cannot find any Code Page used within SQL Server that supports this character. So, it might be a Unicode-only character, at least at far as SQL Server is concerned.
The way to fix this is:
Change the datatype of the field to NVARCHAR (I see in a comment on the question that the field is currently VARCHAR). If the field is VARCHAR then even if you use the N prefix on the string, the character will still get stored as ?, unless the Code Page specified by the Collation of the column supports this character, but again, I think this might be a Unicode-only character.
Change your INSERT statement to prefix the string field with a capital "N": (73, 4, N'(3) ₺'). Even if you change the field to NVARCHAR, if you don't prefix the string with N then SQL Server will translate the character to ? first and then insert the ?. This is because the query gets parsed before it gets executed, and parsing (for non-Unicode string literals and variables) is done in the Code Page of the DB's default Collation
Probably for the same reason my browser isn't displaying it in the title for this question: It isn't in the application's character set (or maybe not supported by the font).
In this case, my browser shows some numbers in a box (denoting the character code).
SQL-server is translating it to a known character instead.
Ensure you're storing it in a field that supports the character in it's character set (I think UTF-8 is sufficient)
I am using PostgreSQL 9.0 and am trying to store a bytea file which contains certain special characters (regional language characters - UTF8 encoded). But I am not able to store the data as input by the user.
For example :
what I get in request while debugging:
<sp_first_name_gu name="sp_first_name_gu" value="ઍયેઍ"></sp_first_name_gu><sp_first_name name="sp_first_name" value="aaa"></sp_first_name>
This is what is stored in DB:
<sp_first_name_gu name="sp_first_name_gu" value="\340\252\215\340\252\257\340\253\207\340\252\215"></sp_first_name_gu><sp_first_name name="sp_first_name" value="aaa"></sp_first_name>
Note the difference in value tag. With this issue I am not able to retrieve the proper text input by the user.
Please suggest what do I need to do?
PS: My DB is UTF8 encoded.
The value is stored correctly, but is escaped into octal escape sequences upon retrieval.
To fix that - change the settings of the DB driver or chose different different encoding/escaping for bytea.
Or just use proper field types for the XML data - like varchar or XML.
Your string \340\252\215\340\252\257\340\253\207\340\252\215 is exactly ઍયેઍ in octal encoding, so postgres stores your data correctly. PostgreSQL escapes all non printable characters, for more details see postgresql documentation, especially section 8.4.2
Like:
insert into table (col) values (N'multilingual unicode strings')
I'm using SQL Server 2008 and I already use nVarChar as the column data type.
You need the N'' syntax only if the string contains characters which are not inside the default code page. "Best practice" is to have N'' whenever you insert into an nvarchar or ntext column.
Yes, you do if you have unicode characters in the strings.
From books online (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191313.aspx)...
"Unicode string constants that appear in code executed on the server, such as in stored procedures and triggers, must be preceded by the capital letter N. This is true even if the column being referenced is already defined as Unicode. Without the N prefix, the string is converted to the default code page of the database. This may not recognize certain characters. The requirement to use the N prefix applies to both string constants that originate on the server and those sent from the client."
It is preferable for compatibility sake.
Best practice is to use parameterisation in which case you don't need the N prefix.