Re: Import/Export failure due to UTF-8 error in pgAdmin4 but not in pgAdmin3

Dave, 

I would imagine Nanina would be in a better position to provide you with problematic import/export data in the short term.  I don't tend to import/export that often these days, preferring to use SQL statements for most things short of a full backup/restore (in my case I've found it to be much less picky). As mentioned previously, in my experience the characters that tend to trip up pgAdmin4 are Windows special characters.  I would imagine the upper Windows-1252 character set as being particularly problematic for pgAdmin4 if it is expecting proper UTF-8 (i.e. ŒœŠšŸŽžƒˆ˜–—‘’‚“”„†‡•…‰‹›€™).  This would explain why Windows ODBC, .Net, and pSQL have no problems dealing with the data.  I would imagine if it the database was set up with  ENCODING =  'WIN1252' then postgreSQL would do the translation into UTF-8 for pgAdmin4, but since it isn't postgreSQL can't provide pgAdmin4 with any help.  It's up to pgAdmin4 to deal with the otherwise valid data appropriately.

I hope your workaround pans out, until then I will spend my time at the psql prompt, or if the data is needed elsewhere run the two functions I had included previously to identify and remove the offensive characters.

Here's the create database script for one of my databases, perhaps it can shed some light (it was originally an 8.3 postgreSQL database {long before my time here, currently running under postgreSQL 10.x} and apparently back then it defaulted to creating SQL_ASCII encoded databases on Windows).

CREATE DATABASE tms_production
    WITH 
    OWNER = local_user
    ENCODING = 'SQL_ASCII'
    LC_COLLATE = 'English_United States.1252'
    LC_CTYPE = 'English_United States.1252'
    TABLESPACE = pg_default
    CONNECTION LIMIT = -1;
ALTER DATABASE tms_production
    SET default_transaction_read_only TO off;
ALTER DATABASE tms_production
    SET client_encoding TO sql_ascii;
ALTER DATABASE tms_production
    SET standard_conforming_strings TO off;  

rik. 

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 8:37 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

Hi Rik

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 6:53 PM richard coleman
<rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
> Thanks for continuing this discussion, but I think you misunderstand the situation.  I am storing valid non-UTF8 data in a SQL_ASCII encoded postgreSQL database (please re-read what I had previously written). This is why psql has NO problem dealing with it.  This is also why Windows ODBC and .Net applications have NO problem dealing with it.  In fact the most common character that pgAdmin4 crashes on is the Windows smart quote.  So to reiterate, I am using valid non-UTF8 characters in a SQL_ASCII database.  This is a supported configuration for postgreSQL.  The issue seems to be that pgAdmin4 is assuming  UTF8 data and crashing/failing/throwing errors when it encounters invalid UTF8 characters.
>
> I hope I have made the situation a little bit clearer.

Well psql is failing to deal with it *in this case*, as that's what is
doing the \copy in the import/export tool.

In other cases (i.e. the ones where pgAdmin sees the data, such as
results in the query tool), the issue arises because Python and/or
Javascript (and by extension pgAdmin) may barf on data encoded in a
way they don't recognise. That's why the PostgreSQL docs say to only
use ASCII data in SQL_ASCII databases - the behaviour is undefined,
and as a result may either not render properly or may crash or error
on non-ASCII data.

Anyhoo, I expect to have a little time after dinner shortly so I'll
try out the workaround I thought of earlier to see if it helps (I
doubt it'll be a panacea, but it may help in some cases).

By any chance do you have a test case you can share with me that
refuses to export from pgAdmin (using the Import/Export tool)? If so,
I'd appreciate a copy of it to play with.

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

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