JavaScript encoding with Special characters

Question

I wanted to write a method to escape special chars like 'ä' to their responding Unicode (e.g. \u00e4).

For some reason JS finds it amusing to not even save the 'ä' internally but use 'üÜ' or some other garble, so when I convert it spits out '\u00c3\u00b6\u00c3\u002013' because it converts these chars instead of 'ä'.

I have tried setting the HTML file's encoding to utf-8 and tried loading the scripts with charset="UTF-8" to no avail. The code doesn't really do anything special but here it is:

String.prototype.replaceWithUtf8 = function() {
    var str_newString = '';
    var str_procString = this;

    for (var i = 0; i < str_procString.length; i++) {
        if (str_procString.charCodeAt(i) > 126) {
            var hex_uniCode = '\\u00' + str_procString.charCodeAt(i).toString(16);
            console.log(hex_uniCode + " (" + str_procString.charAt(i) + ")");
            str_newString += hex_uniCode;
        } else {
            str_newString += str_procString.charAt(i);
        }
    }
    return str_newString;
}
var str_item = "Lärm, Lichter, Lücken, Löcher."

console.log(str_item); // Lärm, Lichter, Lücken, Löcher. 
console.log(str_item.replaceWithUtf8()); //L\u00c3\u00a4rm, Lichter, L\u00c3\u00bccken, L\u00c3\u00b6cher. 

Answer 1

I have no idea how or why but I just restarted the server again and now it's displaying correctly. To follow up; here's the code for everyone who's interested:

String.prototype.replaceWithUtf8 = function() {
    var str_newString = '';
    var str_procString = this;
    var arr_replace = new Array('/', '"');
    var arr_replaceWith = new Array('\\/', '\\"');

    for (var i = 0; i < str_procString.length; i++) {
        var int_charCode = str_procString.charCodeAt(i);
        var cha_charAt = str_procString.charAt(i);
        var int_chrIndex = arr_replace.indexOf(cha_charAt);

        if (int_chrIndex > -1) {
            console.log(arr_replaceWith[int_chrIndex]);
            str_newString += arr_replaceWith[int_chrIndex];
        } else {
            if (int_charCode > 126 && int_charCode < 65536) {
                var hex_uniCode = '\\u' + ("000" + int_charCode.toString(16)).substr(-4);
                console.log(hex_uniCode + " (" + cha_charAt + ")");
                str_newString += hex_uniCode;
            } else {
                str_newString += cha_charAt;
            }
        }
    }
    return str_newString;
}

Answer 2

Use '\\u' + ('000' + str_procString.charCodeAt(i).toString(16) ).stubstr(-4); instead to get the right escape sequences - yours do always start with 00. Also, instead of a for-loop processing your string, .replace() might be faster.

On your question:

console.log("Lärm, Lichter, Lücken, Löcher."); // Lärm, Lichter, Lücken, Löcher.

does not sound as you really sent the file with the right encoding. Might be a server problem, too, if it is correctly saved already.