HttpURLConnection, How is the content of a response decoded?

Question

On an Android device, could an HttpURLConnection recognize the charset of its response automatically?

That is, if I have received some plain text response through an HttpURLConnection, can I get a right String (or maybe a right Reader) without knowing the charset used to encode the response?

Take a look at this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2793150/how-to-use-java-net-urlconnection-to-fire-and-handle-http-requests — Paul Grime, Feb 15 '12 at 10:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 15 '12 at 10:54

1

You can call getContentType() which returns the responses MIME type. If it's a text-based response then this may include the character set, which you can then extract and pass to an InputStreamReader along with the InputStream you get by calling getInputStream().

If the response is not text-based, i.e. it's binary data, then the concept of charset is meaningless.

answered Feb 15 '12 at 10:54

Graham Borland

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So there is no automatic way? – BlueWanderer Feb 15 '12 at 12:55
What do you mean "automatic"? I have told you exactly how to read the charset if it is available. – Graham Borland Feb 15 '12 at 13:08
"automatic" I mean "... without knowing the charset used ...". Actually I know I can parse Content-Type myself... but it just doesn't feel quite nice... – BlueWanderer Feb 15 '12 at 13:18

HttpURLConnection, How is the content of a response decoded?

1 Answers1