I have a web application that support UTF-8 and has been working fine
when I was using OC4J as the servlet/jsp container.  I have several
forms that allow user to submit UTF-8 characters. The JSP will use
request.getParameter() to display the UTF-8 characters into the
browser.

However, after I migrated to Tomcat 5.0, and the JSP pages are having
problems in handling UTF-8 characters. After trying several attempts,I
discover that having "<%@page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8"%>"
on my JSP pages is the main caused that makes the
request.getParameter() not handling the UTF-8 properly. If I removed
it, then it works just fine.

How can I make things work both for Tomcat 5.0 and OC4J without
removing the "<%@page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8"%>" line?


The following is my setup:
- Tomcat 5.0
- JDK 1.4.2_05
- Windows XP

Tomcat's server.xml
    <Connector port="8080"
               URIEncoding="UTF-8"
               maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
               enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
               debug="0" connectionTimeout="20000" 
               disableUploadTimeout="true" />

Note: I do not want to add any java code changes programatically by
creating a new String that convert values into UTF-8.
Thanks for your help in advance.

---

Clarification of Question by noodlestudio-ga on 16 Oct 2005 23:31 PDT

currently the server.xml is located in the same server as the web application.

i've had the exact same problem before actually; oddly enough it
worked when the xml file was on the same server as the application.
how is that in your case? unfortunately i have no real answer for the
problem if you do not want to alter the java code/xml parser.

First. Edit Tomcat's server.xml (add URIEncoding="UTF-8" in Connector tag)
       You're already good
    <Connector port="8080"
               URIEncoding="UTF-8"
               ... />

Second. In the Catalina.bat (windows) file there must be a switch
added to the call to java.exe. The switch is: -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

Here is example >> you can't miss where you add [-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8]
Good luck to you !! 

rem Execute Java with the applicable properties
if not "%JPDA%" == "" goto doJpda
if not "%SECURITY_POLICY_FILE%" == "" goto doSecurity
%_EXECJAVA% %JAVA_OPTS% %CATALINA_OPTS% %DEBUG_OPTS%
-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.endorsed.dirs="%JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS%"
-classpath "%CLASSPATH%" -Dcatalina.base="%CATALINA_BASE%"
-Dcatalina.home="%CATALINA_HOME%" -Djava.io.tmpdir="%CATALINA_TMPDIR%"
%MAINCLASS% %CMD_LINE_ARGS% %ACTION%
goto end
:doSecurity
%_EXECJAVA% %JAVA_OPTS% %CATALINA_OPTS% %DEBUG_OPTS%
-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.endorsed.dirs="%JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS%"
-classpath "%CLASSPATH%" -Djava.security.manager
-Djava.security.policy=="%SECURITY_POLICY_FILE%"
-Dcatalina.base="%CATALINA_BASE%" -Dcatalina.home="%CATALINA_HOME%"
-Djava.io.tmpdir="%CATALINA_TMPDIR%" %MAINCLASS% %CMD_LINE_ARGS%
%ACTION%
goto end
:doJpda
if not "%SECURITY_POLICY_FILE%" == "" goto doSecurityJpda
%_EXECJAVA% %JAVA_OPTS% %CATALINA_OPTS% -Xdebug
-Xrunjdwp:transport=%JPDA_TRANSPORT%,address=%JPDA_ADDRESS%,server=y,suspend=n
%DEBUG_OPTS% -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
-Djava.endorsed.dirs="%JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS%" -classpath "%CLASSPATH%"
-Dcatalina.base="%CATALINA_BASE%" -Dcatalina.home="%CATALINA_HOME%"
-Djava.io.tmpdir="%CATALINA_TMPDIR%" %MAINCLASS% %CMD_LINE_ARGS%
%ACTION%
goto end
:doSecurityJpda
%_EXECJAVA% %JAVA_OPTS% %CATALINA_OPTS%
-Xrunjdwp:transport=%JPDA_TRANSPORT%,address=%JPDA_ADDRESS%,server=y,suspend=n
%DEBUG_OPTS% -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
-Djava.endorsed.dirs="%JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS%" -classpath "%CLASSPATH%"
-Djava.security.manager
-Djava.security.policy=="%SECURITY_POLICY_FILE%"
-Dcatalina.base="%CATALINA_BASE%" -Dcatalina.home="%CATALINA_HOME%"
-Djava.io.tmpdir="%CATALINA_TMPDIR%" %MAINCLASS% %CMD_LINE_ARGS%
%ACTION%
goto end