UTF-8 has become dominant character encoding for the web applications.

In this article, I will talk about how to configure UTF-8 in IBM WAS, Oracle Weblogic, Tomcat, TC Server & JBoss.

WebSphere Application Server

• Login into WebSphere Administrative Console
• Expand Servers >> Application Servers
• Click on Application Server (JVM) you want to enable UTF-8
• Expand Java and Process Management under Server Infrastructure
• Click on Process Definition
• Click on Java Virtual Machine
• Add the following parameter in Generic Java Arguments

-Dclient.encoding.override=UTF-8

• Click Ok, Sync the node if applicable
• Restart Application Server (JVM) for changes to take effect.

Oracle WebLogic Server

• Go to Weblogic Domain path
• Go to bin folder
• Add following parameter in setDomainEnv.sh under JAVA_OPTS variable.

-Dfile.encoding=utf8

• Restart Weblogic server for changes to take effect.

Tomcat

• Go to tomcat home (installation) folder
• Go to conf folder
• Add the following parameter in server.xml under Connector port.

URIEncoding="UTF-8"

Note: if you have multiple Connector ports, you must add them under all.

• Go to tomcat home (installation folder)
• Go to bin folder
• Add the following parameter in catalina.sh under JAVA_OPTS variable.

-Djavax.servlet.request.encoding=UTF-8 -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

Ex:

JAVA_OPTS=”-Djavax.servlet.request.encoding=UTF-8 -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8”

• Restart Tomcat Server for changes to take effect.

TC Server

• Go to TC Server instance folder
• Go to conf folder
• Add the following parameter in server.xml under Connector port.

URIEncoding="UTF-8"

• Go to TC Server instance folder
• Go to bin folder
• Add following in setenv.sh under CATALINA_OPTS variable

-Djavax.servlet.request.encoding=UTF-8 -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

Ex:

CATALINA_OPTS="-Djavax.servlet.request.encoding=UTF-8 -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8"

• Restart TC Server for changes to take effect.

JBoss Application Server

• Go to JBoss installation path
• Go to bin folder
• Add the following parameter in standalone.conf under JAVA_OPTS

-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

• Restart JBoss Server for changes to take effect.

UTF-8 Validation Tools

You can use following online tool to validate if your web application is UTF-8 supported

http://coderstoolbox.net/string/

http://validator.w3.org/

I hope above instructions help you in configuring UTF-8 in multiple application servers.

If you are looking to enhance skills in Oracle Weblogic administration, then check out this course by Chris Parent.