WebClient encoding issue in MonoTouch when building for release
I am having problems with WebClient
that behave differently in release based on real devices than in iOS simulator debug mode.
Apparently the response from the server is interpreted differently and breaks down in releases:
This question seems to be an answer to a similar problem, but I don't want to hardcode the encoding in the application, although it may not change in its lifetime, it seems wrong to do this since the information is already contained in HTTP response
.
I have already opened an issue with Xamarin to investigate this further.
source to share
There are two factors here. Firstly:
it seems wrong to do this since the information is already in the HTTP response
Yes, it looks wrong, but Microsoft.NET WebClient.Encoding is identical to System.Text.Encoding.Default by default .
Quoting MSDN:
The default value of this property is the default encoding returned.
As such, Mono (and MonoTouch) implementations WebClient
behave identically . This is often overlooked (works at the time), but it is the source of hard-to-find (not MonoTouch-specific, but .NET-specific) bugs as there is no guarantee of what might be Default
.
Quoting MSDN:
Different computers may use different default encodings, and the default encoding may even change on the same computer.
Second factor - iOS simulator: simulator not an emulator. This has many advantages (for example, much faster than Android emulators), but it also has its disadvantages (a few IMO, but it only makes them harder to spot).
This means the simulator does not try (hard) to hide the underlying operating system (i.e. OSX) when using a general-purpose API, such as getting the default code page. Since it returns a different value, it System.Text.Encoding.Default
will be initialized with a different code page, which will result in a different implementation being used.
As such, setting your own encoding to not WebClient.Encoding
is the correct (and safe) way to solve your problem (for any .NET application).
source to share
I heard a response from the Xamarin support team and they also suggested setting the encoding explicitly WebClient
.
It WebClient.Encoding
was installed on my device System.Text.Encoding.ASCII
instead of the UTF8
one used in iOS Simulator
.
Still not a general solution, but at least you can use the high-level one DownloadString
:
using (var client = new WebClient())
{
client.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
var response = client.DownloadString("http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58977881/umlautTest.txt");
}
source to share