# Can nginx override encoding of Tomcat back end?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [November 25, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245 "2011-11-25T15:54:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dubstep)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/1 "2011-11-25T15:54:39Z")

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I have been trying for some time now to get Tomcat to serve everything  
with UTF-8 encoding, but some pages keep coming back with ISO-8859-1  
encoding. As Tomcat is sitting behind an nginx remote proxy server, I  
was wondering whether I could configure nginx to override the encoding  
automatically? I have added ‘charset utf-8’ in the server block but this  
by itself obviously doesn’t do the trick. Can I set some response  
headers, perhaps?

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**Author:** ![jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jmaenpaa)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/2 "2011-11-25T16:17:06Z")

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On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 02:51:24PM +0000, John M. wrote:

> I have been trying for some time now to get Tomcat to serve everything  
> with UTF-8 encoding, but some pages keep coming back with ISO-8859-1  
> encoding. As Tomcat is sitting behind an nginx remote proxy server, I  
> was wondering whether I could configure nginx to override the encoding  
> automatically? I have added ‘charset utf-8’ in the server block but this  
> by itself obviously doesn’t do the trick. Can I set some response  
> headers, perhaps?

You can try this, but nginx will scan response body with ISO-8859-1  
trying to convert it to utf-8:

http {  
charset\_map iso-8859-1 utf-8 {}

```
server {
    charset utf-8;
    override_charset on;

```

–  
Igor S.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jmaenpaa)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/3 "2011-11-25T16:27:38Z")

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On 25/11/11 15:16, Igor S. wrote:

> 

Thanks Igor. I tried this, but it’s still leaving the encoding as  
ISO-8859-1 (as reported under Page Info in Firefox). This is 0.6.32 on  
Windows - I don’t know whether a more recent version would help?

JM

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**Author:** ![jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jmaenpaa)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/4 "2011-11-25T16:35:05Z")

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On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 03:24:18PM +0000, John M. wrote:

> > ```
> > override_charset on;
> > 
> > ```
> 
> Thanks Igor. I tried this, but it’s still leaving the encoding as  
> ISO-8859-1 (as reported under Page Info in Firefox).

Are you sure that Firefox did not get it from cache ?

> This is 0.6.32 on  
> Windows - I don’t know whether a more recent version would help?

Where have you found such version ?  
The first nginx/Windows version was 0.7.52.  
There were some change in charset module in 0.8.0, so you can try  
more modern version.

–  
Igor S.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jmaenpaa)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 5:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/5 "2011-11-25T17:12:38Z")

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Igor, thanks for the suggestion. This is now working as it should!

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**Author:** ![jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jmaenpaa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jmaenpaa)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-nginx-override-encoding-of-tomcat-back-end/214245/6 "2011-11-25T16:44:38Z")

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On 25/11/11 15:34, Igor S. wrote:

> Are you sure that Firefox did not get it from cache ?

Pretty sure. Just doing some checking as there are some strange things  
going on…

> > This is 0.6.32 on  
> > Windows - I don’t know whether a more recent version would help?
> 
> Where have you found such version ?  
> The first nginx/Windows version was 0.7.52.  
> There were some change in charset module in 0.8.0, so you can try  
> more modern version.

It was one of the Kevin W. versions. To be honest I’ve not  
really looked at it in a long while. I’ll install a newer version and  
report back.

JM