How to convert iso 8859 string to UTF8 in a postgresql 12 database?

Question

EDIT :

I think I was not clear, I am sorry for that : I have a column with bytea data. This column, when I apply encode(column,'escape') to it, I got text in the iso8859-1 encoding. I would like to change this text to UTF-8 encoding.

However, when I use the convert function :

SELECT convert(encode(column,'escape'),'LATIN1','UTF8') FROM table

I got the error : function convert(text, unknown, unknown) does not exist.

I am currently stuck at this point.

Previous question : When I call convert(encode(column,'escape' When I do:

select encode(name_of_column, 'escape') 
from my_table;

I get a varchar encoded in iso88591 instead of UTF-8. I use Postgresql 12. I cannot find a convert function like Oracle convert function for this Postgresql version.

Does anyone know how to deal with this issue?

Answer 1

As iso8859-1 is also called Latin 1, you can use convert

SELECT convert( 'text_in_Latin 1 or so8859-1 ',  'LATIN1','UTF8')

| convert                                                    |
| :--------------------------------------------------------- |
| \x746578745f696e5f4c6174696e2031206f7220736f383835392d3120 |

db<>fiddle here