[GNC-dev] backend character encoding (related to python 2 to 3 )

[c.holtermann at gmx.de]

Am 2018-09-21 16:11, schrieb John Ralls:
>> On Sep 21, 2018, at 1:43 AM, Geert Janssens 
>> <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
>> 
>> Op vrijdag 21 september 2018 10:02:02 CEST schreef 
>> c.holtermann at gmx.de:
>>> Dear developers,
>>> 
>>> thinking about moving from python2 to 3 I wonder how character
>>> encoding in the backend is done. Can you point me to some docs
>>> about that ? Which encoding in sqlite, mysql, xml ? Where does
>>> encoding take place, where is it being controlled ? I don't need
>>> an extensive answer, just some pointers where to start looking.
>> 
>> From memory I believe we force our gnucash data to be utf-8 at all 
>> times. As
>> this is also the encoding used by glib2 internally there is no need 
>> for extra
>> encoding functionality in the backends.
>> 
>> While not supported users could make changes to the xml data outside 
>> of the
>> application and insert invalid utf-8 in that case. To protect against 
>> that we
>> have one function to validate strings in the xml data file while 
>> loading/
>> saving. It's called checked_char_cast and is located in:
>> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/maint/libgnucash/backend/xml/gnc-xml-helper.cpp
>> 
>> I don't think we have something similar in the db backends. I think we 
>> rely on
>> the dbms to handle this for us.
>> 
>> I'm writing much in conditional terms as I don't know this part in 
>> gnucash
>> very thoroughly. John may correct me if I misunderstood.
> 
> Right. checked_char_cast isn’t needed in the SQL backends because the
> database engines enforce utf-8 for us.
> 
> I *think* for python the only issue is making sure that every path
> between python and GnuCash is bridged as utf-8.
> 
> Guile is another matter, but it’s not germane to this topic.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
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Thank you for the info,

regards,

Christoph Holtermann