Thread: COPY Command UtfToLocal: could not convert UTF-8

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, kerdem wrote:

> I installed PG 7.3.4 and created DB with encoding �LATIN10�  . I tried
> to import Flat-File  with Copy Command
>
> String  delimeter ;";
> String  FILEPATH ="/home/kerdem/upstream/LIQ.txt";
> String pgcopy ="copy public.liq_import from '"+FILEPATH+"' with
> delimiter '"+delimeter+"'  NULL AS '' ";
>
>          pstmt = con.prepareStatement(pgcopy);
>                         pstmt.executeUpdate();
>                         pstmt.close();
>
> WARNING: copy: line 2, UtfToLocal: could not convert UTF-8 (0xe47469).
> Ignored
>
> But  wenn I use same command  from psql console in DB  I can import all
> of the special letter,
>
>   copy public.liq_import from '/home/kerdem/upstream/LIQ.txt' delimiter
> ';'  NULL as '' ;
>

I imagine this problem is a result of the JDBC driver setting the
client_encoding variable to unicode (which it needs to function properly),
this is making the COPY command think the file has a unicode encoding.
When connecting with psql your client_encoding defaults to the database
encoding which I imagine is what the file is encoded as.

As to how to solve this problem?  It is possible to SET the
client_encoding temporarily and then reset it after the COPY is done, but
this is something I hesitate to recommend because it's definitely not
something the JDBC driver wants you doing.  I'm not sure what else to
could be done, extend the COPY command to take an encoding argument?

Kris Jurka