How to find out the UTF-8 value of any String (Arabic or similar languages) at runtime in Java

[Sarmad Thebo]

I've searched for hours on internet hoping to find a way, but i didn't find anything!
I want to know if there is any way to find out the UTF-8 value of any string ? For example, in JTextField , the user enters a word of my local language
لاهور

Now is there any way to find out UTF-8 value of لاهور ? Something like this \u0644 !
This is my first post in this forum.
If you can't see the word which i posted then check this page www.thekawish.com/‎

[Wendy L Gibbons]

would urlencoder be of any use to you?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

That isn't UTF-8. That is UTF-16. You can read about UTF-8 on the Unicode website, Wikipedia, or Joel Spolsky's website and you can find charts here.
Yes, you can print out the characters of a String very simply

public class CharacterPrinter
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        for (String s : args)
        {
            new CharacterPrinter(s).printCharacters();
        }
    }

    private final String text;
    private CharacterPrinter(String s)
    { 
        text = s;
    }

    private void printCharacters()
    {
        for (char c : text.toCharArray())
        {
            System.out.printf("%c = 0x%04x%n", c, (int)c);
        }
    }
}

[campbell@campbellscomputer java]$ java CharacterPrinter "Campbell Ritchie" e=mc² ر "ℙ(INT × INT)"
C = 0x0043
a = 0x0061
m = 0x006d
p = 0x0070
b = 0x0062
e = 0x0065
l = 0x006c
l = 0x006c
= 0x0020
R = 0x0052
i = 0x0069
t = 0x0074
c = 0x0063
h = 0x0068
i = 0x0069
e = 0x0065
e = 0x0065
= = 0x003d
m = 0x006d
c = 0x0063
² = 0x00b2
ر = 0x0631
ℙ = 0x2119
( = 0x0028
I = 0x0049
N = 0x004e
T = 0x0054
= 0x0020
× = 0x00d7
= 0x0020
I = 0x0049
N = 0x004e
T = 0x0054
) = 0x0029

Of course that isn't UTF-8 but UTF-16. You should be able to use the formulae given in the links to convert UTF-16 to the n bytes required for UTF-8.

[Sarmad Thebo]

i wana make a desktop app ! My idea is to compare my local language words,
if it was english, it would have been a piece of cake ! But since i can't directly use an arabic or similar words in my program
for example:

if(JTextfield.getText.equals(" لاهور"))
{
//then do something
}

I'm sure you can't do this ^

[Richard Tookey]

Sarmad Thebo wrote:
Now is there any way to find out UTF-8 value of لاهور ? Something like this \u0644 !

I'm not sure you really mean UTF8; you would seem to actually mean UTF16 code points. The UTF16 code points values can be obtained by iterating through the string and formatting the characters using something along the lines of

for (int i = 0; i < string.length(); i++)
{
    char ch = string.geteChar(i);
    Str5ing charAsString = String.format("\\u%04x", ch);
   // At this point the formatted char can be added to a StringBuilder
}

If you do mean UTF8 then you can get the utf-8 bytes using

byte[] utfBytes = "لاهور".getBytes("utf-8");p

and then you can iterate through the bytes converting them to the HEX.

Edit: Once again I'm far too slow!

[Campbell Ritchie]

Of course you can use the equals() method on Arabic text.
But text fields are not intended for entering options. They are intended for entering data. More a case of name = nameField.getText();
You would usually use buttons or menu items for options.

Something went wrong with the copy and paste on the Arabic text when I ran that little program. The original on the terminal looked a lot better. Where the = is at the very left, a space has been missed out by the software.ery

[Sarmad Thebo]

Of course you can use the equals() method on Arabic text.
But text fields are not intended for entering options. They are intended for entering data. More a case of name = nameField.getText();
You would usually use buttons or menu items for options.

Something went wrong with the copy and paste on the Arabic text when I ran that little program. The original on the terminal looked a lot better. Where the = is at the very left, a space has been missed out by the software.ery

dude this language is not arabic ! like is said its my local language, its called Sindhi .. i searched on the internet for Sindhi literals of unicode and there appeared be onlly UTF-8 written on every page i visited ! Now i have to see the differences between them ! *sigh*

i know about controls,

see this,

JFrame frame = new JFrame("Sharp Edge");
public class Myframe implements ActionListener{
JTextField jf = new JTextField();
JButton btn1 = new JButton("compare the word");
frame.add(btn1);
frame.add(jf);
btn1.addActionListener(this);
text1.addActionListener(this);

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
		
		
		if(e.getSource()==btn1)
		{
			if(jf.getText.equals(لاهور))
                            {
                               // do something here
                                        }
			
		}
}

The code should be something like this, I'm too lazy to write the main method but you can get it
i have tried this and this is not working for me !
i intend to make a text to speech based on comparisons of words, if the word matches a method containing querry would run, playing an audio file.

[Paul Clapham]

Arabic (the script), Sindhi (the language), it doesn't matter. You don't need to mess with UTF-8 or UTF-16 for ordinary String processing since both of those are fully supported by Unicode and Java fully supports Unicode.

Now you might have to make sure you've chosen a suitable font for your Swing components. That would be one which supports all of the characters you need to use. (Google "Sindhi font" if you don't already have one.) You should also make sure your keyboard is configured to support those characters too.

You may well find that Sindhi web pages are encoded in UTF-8; there's nothing special about that, I always encode my web pages in UTF-8 even though they are in English. UTF-8 can represent all Unicode characters.

[Sarmad Thebo]

Arabic (the script), Sindhi (the language), it doesn't matter. You don't need to mess with UTF-8 or UTF-16 for ordinary String processing since both of those are fully supported by Unicode and Java fully supports Unicode.

Now you might have to make sure you've chosen a suitable font for your Swing components. That would be one which supports all of the characters you need to use. (Google "Sindhi font" if you don't already have one.) You should also make sure your keyboard is configured to support those characters too.

You may well find that Sindhi web pages are encoded in UTF-8; there's nothing special about that, I always encode my web pages in UTF-8 even though they are in English. UTF-8 can represent all Unicode characters.

Thanks this really helped to clear my confusion, i wish i could give you a +10.
Yes i will download the Sindhi fonts now ! Thank you once again,

[Campbell Ritchie]

As Paul C says, it doesn't matter which language you use.

The multiple if blocks and use of addActionListener(this); even if you find them in many books, do not look at all good to me.
There is an object‑oriented way to find your audio files. A Map.