Redmine

If I read you correctly, this is an encoding problem. If you have everything from the ground up UTF-8 and every program that accesses does so in UTF-8, it shouldn't be a problem.

If you had redmine in UTF-8 and MySQL with latin-1, you first need to change the collation of all tables from latin-1 to UTF-8 and convert the contents of the DBs from latin-1 to UTF-8, only changing the collation is not enough.

Funny! I'm having EXACTLY the same problem now (Bitnami RedMine 1.0.3 + VS 2010 app = Encoding problems).

Eight months ago I did a little application in C# / VS 2010 to pump data from our old bugtracker to RedMine. Everything was working fine, including the accents / encoding. Unfortunately, I had to put that project on hold. And I don't remember now which RedMine version I was using at time.

Today, I built a new RedMine installation (from Bitnami, 1.0.3) and I ran the C# program again. This time, the encoding was broken! Exactly the way you described (Redmine showing �, etc). Now I'm trying to discover WHAT is wrong.

My steps were:

• Installed Bitnami RedMine on a Bitnami RubyStack VM
• Added line "encoding: utf8" in 'production' database (database.yml)
• Rebuilt Redmine database as UTF-8:

mysql -uroot -pbitnami -e "drop database bitnami_redmine;" 
mysql -uroot -pbitnami -e "create database bitnami_redmine character set utf8;" 
cd /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/
rake generate_session_store
rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV=production

• Ran the C# application

As I said, these very same steps DID worked some time ago. The encoding was correct. But, today, something is broken.

I didn't touch the code so I'm wondering what may have changed in RedMine or MySql since then.

BTW: My C# app always used the following connection string:

<add name="Redmine" connectionString="server=REDMINESERVER;uid=root;pwd=bitnami;database=bitnami_redmine;charset=utf8;" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection, MySql.Data, Version=6.2.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d"/>

And I'm using the same MySql .NET Provider (I didn't update it)

Any tips or ideas are (very) welcome.

Regards,

F.D.Castel

Felix Schäfer wrote:

If you have everything from the ground up UTF-8 and every program that accesses does so in UTF-8, it shouldn't be a problem.

Agreed (in theory). But this is exactly what I'm doing (so I think :) )

Well... DEFINITELY my program is doing something wrong.

I rebuilt the database again but this time I did run redmine:load_default_data using [pt-BR] data instead of the default [en]. This way, instead of "Home" Redmine shows "Página Inicial", etc

The data from my C# app appears with � characters, but Redmine localized strings are fine("Página Inicial", "Últimos projetos"). This with browser using default Encoding (UTF-8)

However, if I change the browser Encoding to "Western European (Windows)" the strings inserted by my program are displayed correctly! And the Redmine localized strings are wrong! ("Página inicial", "Últimos projetos").

So, the problem is on C# side. My program IS NOT sending strings in UTF-8, regardless the "charset=utf8" on connection string.

I upgraded MySql connector to v6.3.5.0 but the problem persists.

Peter, I hope this helps you in some way.

Regards,

F.D.Castel

P.S.: Of course, I'm wondering HOW this did work once...

Hello F.D.

thanks for you feedback on that matter F.D. No, I could not solve that correctly. In order to be able to pump the data into the database I replaced all characters which caused trouble: ä to ae and so on. A German reader could still read that but I really would like to understand what went wrong.

But also is interesting how new data now is stored into the database. O.K. everybody would expect UTF-8. But I have to admit that I am a fan of MS SQL Server. So in the future I would like to move my Redmine database from MySQL to MS SQL if I can manage it to get it work together with Ruby and Rails. Although my first attempts were not successful. Anyway: if I am going to try it I will do in in the same way - with the same trouble? But O.K. that is a new topic.

Regards

Peter

Peter!

Please, if you can, try to run this SQL command on your VS app after connect to database:

set names utf8;

And run it again. Then tell me what happened (Sorry, but I cannot test this now).

About MSSQL, I once tried to install RedMine on a SQL Server but I had so many troubles that I gave up. YMMV, but I just found Bitnami on a VM much simpler ;)

Been there, done that.

Best regards,

F.D.Castel

Hi,

I wonder if this scenario will do it:

1. Create SQL dump file using MySQL Administrator ot mysqldump.exe.
2. Load a copy of the dump file into a text editor that is capable to convert texts to UTF-8 (Notepad++ is).
3. Convert to UTF-8, then inspect what has happened with the German characters, and if they are visible go to next step.
4. Change all occurrences of 'latin1' or 'latin2' with 'UTF-8'.
5. Import this modified dump file. This operation will replace the tables and the data.
6. Check what has happened ...

May this help you in some way...

Ivan

Hello,
I'm new in Redmine. And I would like to know how the redmine store de data?, I mean redmine use MYSQL for store data and how can I access to them.

please help me... is very important to find out it, because is part of my job.

Regards,
Jul

With any MySQL client using credentials specified in your Redmine config/database.yml file.