java utf8 encoding outputstream not working

Question

I need to write a program which is able to write UTF-8 data into a file.

I found out examples on the internet, however, I am not able to progress to desired result.

Code:

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.io.Writer;

public class UTF8WriterDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Writer out = null;
        try {
            out = new BufferedWriter(
                    new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("c://java//temp.txt"), "UTF-8"));


            String text = "This texáát will be added to File !!";

            out.write(text);
            out.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

}

Everything run succesfully, but at the end I see special characters not showing properly: This texáát will be added to File !!

I tried several examples from the internet with the same result.

I use Visual Studio code.

Where could be the problem please?

Thank you

Answer 1

Your code is correct. You probably already have a file named temp.txt, and therefore Java writes text to the existing file (replacing previous content). What can be a problem is an encoding, that you already have set in your file.

In other words, you can't (or at least shouldn't) write UTF-8 text to the file with for example WINDOWS-1250 encoding or you would get an exact result as you have described.

If you didn't have this file, Java would automatically create a file with UTF-8 encoding.

Possible solutions:

1. Change encoding of your current file (usually you can open it in any text editor, use Save as and then specify encoding as UTF-8.
2. Remove this file and Java will create it automatically with proper encoding.

---

By the way, you should use StandardCharsets class instead of using String charsetName in order to avoid UnsupportedEncodingException:

new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("temp.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)

Answer 2

When you say "I see special characters not showing properly", where are you seeing them?

What you say/show next looks like the string, utf-8 encoded (i.e. the accented a's are each represented by 2 chars, in what appears to be the appropriate encoding).

What I would expect the issue to be is that the java code is not outputting a BOM at the beginning of the file, leaving the interpretation of utf-8 sequences up to the discretion of the reader.