Question

Im new to this, but have got a generation script to ics file, to working 100% for iCal and Outlook, but i cant see how i fixing the Encoding.

When i have a text in my Database with the nordic æ ø å (æ ø å) then i get the letters as ?.
Can someone help me setting this up to use iso-8859-1.

OR do i need to make 6 replace code that replace the letter with the html-tag (æ ø å) !?

My code is

Imports System.Data.OleDb
Imports System.Data
Imports RF.Event2

Partial Class _new
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    If Not Page.IsPostBack Then

    End If
End Sub

Protected Sub btnExport_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
    Dim ical As New iCalendar()

    Dim strConnection As OleDbConnection = New OleDbConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("ConnStr").ConnectionString)
    Dim strQuery As String = String.Empty

    strQuery = "SELECT * FROM [Events] WHERE ([EventType]='K' OR [EventType]='E' OR [EventType]='T') ORDER BY [EventDate] ASC"
    Dim daEvents As New OleDbDataAdapter(strQuery, strConnection)
    Dim dtEvents As New DataTable
    strConnection.Open()
    daEvents.Fill(dtEvents)
    strConnection.Close()

    If (dtEvents.Rows.Count > 0) Then

        For i As Integer = 0 To dtEvents.Rows.Count - 1
            Dim ev As New [Event]()
            ev.Title = dtEvents.Rows(i)("EventHome")
            ev.Description = dtEvents.Rows(i)("EventNote")
            ev.Location = dtEvents.Rows(i)("EventPlace")
            ev.StartTime = DateTime.Parse(dtEvents.Rows(i)("EventDate"))
            ev.EndTime = DateTime.Parse(dtEvents.Rows(i)("EventDate").AddMinutes(90))
            ical.Events.Add(ev)
        Next
    End If
    ' Set the content-type of the response and file name
    ' so Windows knows how to handle the response.
    Context.Response.Buffer = True
    Context.Response.ContentType = "text/calendar"
    Context.Response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")
    Context.Response.Charset = "iso-8859-1"
    Context.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "inline;filename=Sport.ics")

    ' Write the bytes of the iCalendar item output to the resonse stream
    Context.Response.BinaryWrite(New System.Text.ASCIIEncoding().GetBytes(ical.Output))
    Context.Response.[End]()

    'Dim enc As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")
End Sub


End Class

Answer 1

You are writing to the stream using ASCIIEncoding which maps the problematic characters to ‘?’.

You can fix your code and make it resistant to this bug doing a few modifications:

Context.Response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1") 
Context.Response.Charset = Context.Response.ContentEncoding.WebName
Context.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "inline;filename=Sport.ics") 

' Write the bytes of the iCalendar item output to the resonse stream 
Context.Response.BinaryWrite(Context.Response.ContentEncoding.GetBytes(ical.Output))