React Native WebView Android: arabic text showing up as weird character

Question

I'm using React Native WebView to show html content from a file. I tested using iOS Simulator, it's working fine. But somehow when I test it on Android Emulator, the arabic text is not showing properly, instead of weird characters like: ä, ö, ü are appearing.

This is my code:

render() {
    const { content } = this.state

    return (
        <View style={style.container}>
            ...

            <WebView 
                source={{ html: content }}
                onMessage={(event) => this.playAudio.call(this, event.nativeEvent.data)} 
            />
        </View>
    )
}

componentDidMount() {
    const { state } = this.props.navigation

    RNFS.readFileAssets(`content/${state.params.item.id}`, 'utf8')
        .then((content) => {
            console.log('content', content)
            this.setState({ ...this.state, content })
        })
        .catch((err) => {
            console.log('error', err.message, err.code)
        })
}

My package.json:

{
  "name": "doadzikirandroid",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node node_modules/react-native/local-cli/cli.js start",
    "test": "jest"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "moment": "^2.20.1",
    "react": "16.0.0",
    "react-native": "0.51.0",
    "react-native-admob": "^2.0.0-beta.4",
    "react-native-fs": "^2.9.6",
    "react-native-gesture-handler": "^1.0.0-alpha.35",
    "react-native-search-box": "^0.0.13",
    "react-native-sound": "^0.10.4",
    "react-native-tab-view": "^0.0.73",
    "react-native-vector-icons": "^4.4.3",
    "react-navigation": "^1.0.0-beta.22"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-jest": "22.0.4",
    "babel-preset-react-native": "4.0.0",
    "jest": "22.0.4",
    "react-test-renderer": "16.0.0"
  },
  "jest": {
    "preset": "react-native"
  }
}

Output:

Browser console log:

How should I do to fix this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here's the solution that worked for me. Add baseUrl: '' to source property of the WebView. UTF-8 displays correctly then!

<WebView
    source={{baseUrl: '', html: "Your HTML content here"}}
    style={}
    bounces={true}
/>