What does the message "Invalid byte 2 of a 3-byte UTF-8 sequence" mean?

encoding utf-8 orbeon
avernet picture avernet · Jul 4, 2012 · Viewed 73.4k times · Source

I changed a file in Orbeon Forms, and the next time I load the page, I get an error message saying Invalid byte 2 of a 3-byte UTF-8 sequence. How can I solve this problem?

Answer

avernet picture avernet · Jul 4, 2012

This happens when Orbeon Forms reads an XML file and expects it to use the UTF-8 encoding, but somehow the file isn't properly encoded in UTF-8. To solve this, make sure that:

  1. You have an XML declaration at the beginning of the file saying the file is in UTF-8:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

  2. Your editor is XML-aware, so it can parse the XML declaration and consequently use the UTF-8 encoding. If your editor isn't XML aware, and you don't want to use another editor, look for an option or preference allowing you to specify that the editor must use UTF-8.

Related questions

Working with UTF-8 encoding in Python source

Consider: $ cat bla.py u = unicode('d…') s = u.encode('utf-8') print s $ python bla.py File "bla.py", line 1 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file bla.py on line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://…

Read More
Excel to CSV with UTF8 encoding

I have an Excel file that has some Spanish characters (tildes, etc.) that I need to convert to a CSV file to use as an import file. However, when I do Save As CSV it mangles the "special" Spanish characters …

Read More
HTML encoding issues - "Â" character showing up instead of "&nbsp;"

I've got a legacy app just starting to misbehave, for whatever reason I'm not sure. It generates a bunch of HTML that gets turned into PDF reports by ActivePDF. The process works like this: Pull an HTML template from a …

Read More