# Spanish Characters Encoding issue with Ignition while committing to SQL Server DB **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Tags:** perspective\ **Created:** [February 26, 2026, 11:03am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201 "2026-02-26T11:03:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lahaul\_Seth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ab097/32.png) [@Lahaul\_Seth](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Lahaul_Seth)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 11:03am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/1 "2026-02-26T11:03:44Z")
We have some incoming inventory XMLs which has Spanish characters. We store the XML in a SQL Server DB table with XML datatype for the column. XML datatype already supports UTF-8 encoding, so there shouldn’t be any issue with storing Spanish characters. If I directly use an insert command to store Spanish characters on SQL Server, they remain intact. But when I try to insert the XML using system.db.runUpdateQuery() with N’ ‘ prefix or system.db.runPrepUpdate with ? parameters from a script, the Spanish encoding breaks during storage in DB. Garbled characters get stored. Has anyone else seen this behavior from Ignition script or know a fix for this ? I also saw this old post. Not sure whether a similar issue could be there for XML data type on SQL Server DB - [Special Characters](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/special-characters/16375) ---
**Author:** ![Alejandro\_Alaco](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/alejandro_alaco/32/59849_2.png) [@Alejandro\_Alaco](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Alejandro_Alaco)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 11:28am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/2 "2026-02-26T11:28:41Z")
Maybe make sure you’re passing a real Unicode string from Jython u" befreo store it on the SQL Server xml\_u = unicode(xml\_string) # or ensure it’s u"..." system.db.runPrepUpdate("INSERT ... VALUES (?)", [xml\_u], "CONN") ---
**Author:** ![Lahaul\_Seth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ab097/32.png) [@Lahaul\_Seth](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Lahaul_Seth)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 11:45am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/3 "2026-02-26T11:45:53Z")
Tried this. Didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![michael.flagler](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/michael.flagler/32/26272_2.png) [@michael.flagler](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/michael.flagler)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 3:37pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/4 "2026-02-26T15:37:54Z")
> [@Alejandro\_Alaco](#): > > Maybe make sure you’re passing a real Unicode string from Jython u" befreo store it on the SQL Server > > xml\_u = unicode(xml\_string) # or ensure it’s u"..." > system.db.runPrepUpdate("INSERT ... VALUES (?)", [xml\_u], "CONN") I wonder if you need to also add the "u" in front of the SQL query like so: ```python xml_u = unicode(xml_string) # or ensure it’s u"..." system.db.runPrepUpdate(u"INSERT ... VALUES (?)", [xml_u], "CONN") ``` ---
**Author:** ![bkarabinchak.psi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/bkarabinchak.psi/32/83567_2.png) [@bkarabinchak.psi](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/bkarabinchak.psi)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 4:07pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/5 "2026-02-26T16:07:41Z")
Have you tried via a named query? ---
**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 4:12pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/6 "2026-02-26T16:12:05Z")
At the point where you **get** the XML from the external source, log `repr(xml)` to see if the encoding is broken before you ever try to put it in the DB. ---
**Author:** ![Lahaul\_Seth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ab097/32.png) [@Lahaul\_Seth](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Lahaul_Seth)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 4:43am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/7 "2026-02-27T04:43:18Z")
@michael.flagler - Tried your recommendation. Didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Lahaul\_Seth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ab097/32.png) [@Lahaul\_Seth](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Lahaul_Seth)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 10:44am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/8 "2026-02-27T10:44:15Z")
Thanks for this tip. Encoding was breaking when XML was being retrieved from an url. I used the following code to fix it along with system.db.runPrepUpdate() ```python client = system.net.httpClient() response = client.get(url) filecontent = response.getText("UTF-8") ``` ---
**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 5:27pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/9 "2026-02-27T17:27:59Z")
Interesting. `getText` uses the charset returned in the response headers, falling back to UTF-8 automatically if not specified. You had to add the explicit charset to get it to work, or you had to migrate to `system.net.httpClient` vs `system.net.httpGet` or something? ---
**Author:** ![Lahaul\_Seth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ab097/32.png) [@Lahaul\_Seth](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Lahaul_Seth)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 8:33am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/spanish-characters-encoding-issue-with-ignition-while-committing-to-sql-server-db/114201/10 "2026-03-02T08:33:17Z")
I was using system.net.httpGet initially. I switched to system.net.httpClient and set UTF-8 explicitly as all the XMLs we receive are in UTF-8 format.