Re: Transferring Unicode data

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:59 AM, mlazarus <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

What is the "safest" way to do file transfers with Unicode data? Meaning,
to keep the integrity of the data, not from a security standpoint.

It kind of depends. (What else is new?) But one of the cases you
brought up is getting data out of an Excel file and into a PF or
database table. A highly safe way of doing that is to put the Excel
file onto the IFS (binary transfers normally go pretty well) and then
read the Excel file on the i.

I use iSeriesPython and xlrd for this; most folks on this list use
Java and POI (usually through Scott Klement's RPG wrappers).

For other file formats, I find the main challenges are (a) knowing
what encoding the data is already in, and what encoding you need the
data to be in when it gets where it's going; and (b) understanding the
*concept* of Unicode. If you can't tackle these, the whole endeavor
reduces to flailing around, trying different encodings at various
points in the process.

John Y.