JSP: can't figure out how to set UTF-8 for GlassFish 3.1.2 response

Question

I'm using GlassFish 3.1.2 and seeing the following warning whenever I access my JSP pages:

PWC4011: Unable to set request character encoding to UTF-8 from context /myapp, because request parameters have already been read, or ServletRequest.getReader() has already been called

My JSP files start with:

<%@page pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

My WEB-INF/glassfish-web.xml file is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE glassfish-web-app PUBLIC "-//GlassFish.org//DTD GlassFish Application Server 3.1 Servlet 3.0//EN" "http://glassfish.org/dtds/glassfish-web-app_3_0-1.dtd">
<glassfish-web-app>
    <parameter-encoding default-charset="UTF-8"/>

    <jsp-config>
    <jsp-property-group>
        <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
        <page-encoding>UTF-8</page-encoding>
    </jsp-property-group>
    </jsp-config>

</glassfish-web-app>

My WEB-INF/web.xml file is:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
     version="2.5">

I believe the warning is triggered (as per here) when executing the setCharacterEncoding() code that I always place before the first instance of request.getAttribute() in a JSP page, such as

request.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
personName = request.getAttribute("personName");

but I've no idea how to resolve this.

My web.xml uses servlet 2.5, which I believe is JSP 2.1 (I know JSP 1.x does not support UTF-8, but I think JSP 2.1 does support UTF-8). I tried upgrading the web.xml file to start with

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
    version="3.0">

but this just led to GlassFish severe errors starting with

[#|2014-11-06T16:11:09.772-0800|SEVERE|glassfish3.1.2|javax.enterprise.system.tools.deployment.org.glassfish.deployment.common|_ThreadID=1;_ThreadName=Thread-2;|DPL8015: Invalid Deployment Descriptors in Deployment descriptor file WEB-INF/web.xml in archive [myapp]. Line 25 Column 23 -- cvc-complex-type.2.4.a: Invalid content was found starting with element 'display-name'. One of '{"http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":servlet-class, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":jsp-file, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":init-param, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":load-on-startup, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":enabled, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":async-supported, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":run-as, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":security-role-ref, "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee":multipart-config}' is expected.|#]

Whenever I make changes I make sure I restart GlassFish server. I'm assuming GlassFish auto-detects the presence of glassfish-web.xml, but let me know if I need to configure it somewhere for GlassFish to realize this file exists.

I've followed all the advice I could find online. Need some help to figure this out. Any advice much appreciated.

UPDATE 1

I notice that if I remove request.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8"); from the JSP page so that the following

request.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
personName = request.getAttribute("personName");

becomes just

personName = request.getAttribute("personName");

that the warning goes away. Does this mean that request.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8"); should only be present in the Java servlets before issuing a request.getParameter(), and NOT in the JSP pages at all?

UPDATE 2

I'm still seeing an encoding warning in GlassFish server.log file, although this time it is not coming from my web app:

[#|2014-11-10T10:02:57.234-0800|WARNING|glassfish3.1.2|org.apache.catalina.connector.Request|_ThreadID=57;_ThreadName=Thread-2;|PWC4011: Unable to set request character encoding to UTF-8 from context , because request parameters have already been read, or ServletRequest.getReader() has already been called|#]

Not sure where this is coming from, or how to fix, but I'll modify GlassFish JVM encoding by adding in the option from the GlassFish admin console -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 here: Configurations>server-config>JVM Settings>JVM Options, and restart server.

I also added the character set filter shown here: How to get UTF-8 working in Java webapps? . Although, it's made for Tomcat, I hope it still works for GlassFish.

Take a look at this: stackoverflow.com/questions/7643484/… — Shota

Douglas Henrique Douglas Henrique · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-19T14:20:17

The Solution: Create/edit the file glassfish-web.xml (folder WEB-INF):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE glassfish-web-app PUBLIC "-//GlassFish.org//DTD GlassFish Application Server 3.1 Servlet 3.0//EN" 
"http://glassfish.org/dtds/glassfish-web-app_3_0-1.dtd">
<glassfish-web-app error-url="">
    <class-loader delegate="true"/>
    <!-- Change the default character encoding from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 -->
    <parameter-encoding default-charset="UTF-8"/>
    <jsp-config>
        <property name="keepgenerated" value="true">
            <description>Keep a copy of the generated servlet class' java code.</description>
        </property>
    </jsp-config>
</glassfish-web-app>

JSP: can't figure out how to set UTF-8 for GlassFish 3.1.2 response

1 Answers