How do I do content encoding properly in node.js?

Question

Given the following code

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text'});
    response.write("Okay – so recently I’ve started presenting a session to various groups involving the well known IOC container “StructureMap”", 'utf8');
    response.end();
}).listen(8080);

I get the output

Okay – so recently I’ve started presenting a session to various groups involving the well known IOC container “StructureMap†– and despite being pretty clear about the contents of said talk I’m getting quite a bit of backlash for demonstrating anything that even remotely resembles service location.

This is clearly wrong - but is it wrong because I've got the wrong encoding (UTF8 should do it... right?... right?) or is it wrong because node is doing something weird?

I am using the latest version of node, cloned from github master yesterday.

Answer 1

If you want it to be downloaded as a text file with the proper encoding, you should use the text/plain; charset=utf-8content type. Simply using text isn't enough. I just tested it and it works as expected. Change plain to html to make the browser use its default styles on the text.