Urldecoding and SAS Stored process

[Kodit]

Hi,

I'm running a Stored Process that sometimes will take Swedish letters as an input and I'm having trouble getting sas to Decode them properly.
so I have a request that looks like this, and the idea is that ref should resolve to ÖstersundHuvudlager.

http://myserver/SASStoredProcess/do?_PROGRAM=/DPPL/StoredProcesses/radbortagning&ref=%D6stersundHuvu...

However what I get is ;

REF=>stersundHuvudlager 

_ENCODING=UTF-8

_REQENCODING=UTF-8

I assume this has to do with that the sas encoding is utf-8 and the request isnt. But I'm unsure how to solve it.

[jklaverstijn]

When I look at your encoding using %D6 than I find that it encodes for Ö but not in UTF-8. This looks like a Latin encoding. The same character encoded using UTF-8 is %C3%96.

I found this doing this in a UTF-8 SAS session:

24         data _null_;
25         	sw='Östersund';
26         	swe=urlencode(sw);
27         	put _all_;
28         run;

sw=Östersund swe=%C3%96stersund _ERROR_=0 _N_=1

So I would have a look at the URL.

Hope this helps,

-- Jan

[Vince_SAS]

Here are some suggestions:

1. Always use UTF-8 based encoding. That means that Ö is encoded as %C3%96, and not %D6.

2. Specify this option in your SAS Stored Process code to ensure that the URLENCODE/URLDECODE functions use the UTF-8 encoding/decoding method:

options urlencoding=utf8;

This sample code simulates a stored process that gives the desired result:

options urlencoding=utf8;

*  Your input parameter;

%let REF=%nrstr(%%C3%%96stersundHuvudlager);

*  Your decoded input parameter;

%let REF_DECODED=%sysfunc(urldecode(&REF));

%put &=REF  &=REF_DECODED;

This technique should work with Unicode and non-Unicode SAS Stored Process Servers.

Vince DelGobbo
SAS R&D