jsp encoding display issue

Question

I am finding a issue where the data is encoded properly in the controller and compiled jsp, but is not displaying properly within an alert statement (or on the page). Please see the following configurations.

• tomcat server property

-Dfile.encoding=UTF8

• java controller - hard coded value

renderRequest.setAttribute("general", "¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯");

• first line in jsp

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

• jsp scriptlet to display session attribute

<%
    String general = (String)request.getAttribute("general");
    System.out.println("#### general is: " + general);
%> 

#### general is: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• html in jsp

<p>¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯</p>

<pre>'<%= request.getAttribute("general") %>'</pre>

• compiled jsp snippet showing encoded chars

out.write("\t\t<p>¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯</p>\r\n");

• all display

¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• web.xml configuration

    <filter>
        <filter-name>setCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.apache.catalina.filters.SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>encoding</param-name>
            <param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <async-supported>true</async-supported>
    </filter>

• server.xml configuration

<Connector URIEncoding="UTF-8" connectionTimeout="20000" port="7070" protocol="HTTP/1.1" redirectPort="8443"/>

What sort of simple configuration am I missing here?

Answer 1

It was a simple oversight to also include the filter-mapping along with the filter (slaps forehead). Added the following to the web.xml config along with the previous updates and all worked.

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>setCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>