ByteArray objects cannot be converted to strings

[TrevJames]

We're migrating our application server from ColdFusion 5.1 to CF MX 7, and
running into an issue with a specific web page. Our news stories are posted
via a CF admin interface and they post to a MySQL database. The page in
question is here:

[url]http://newdraco.hood.edu/news/index.cfm?pid=_story_details.htm&featureID=1164&ty[/url]
pe=0

If you load this page you'll get an error stating:


ByteArray objects cannot be converted to strings.




Now what's interesting is that the page posts the title and date of the news
release so those database fields (title, dateFormat) are working. However the
error occurs in the "story" database field. This field is specified in our
database as "BLOB." I get the same error message if I enable the BLOB in my
CFAdmin. So it appears that the BLOB is the problem.

What's even more interesting is if I change the BLOB to "LONGTEXT" in the
database. Then if I enable both BLOB and CLOB in the CFAdmin, the stories post
without a problem. Some characters display funny, but for the most part the
entire story runs without error.

So, my question is whether any other CF users have encountered this issue??
If you have do you have a workaround to suggest. I suppose it could be fixed
by tweaking my coldfusion code on the actual page in question but I'm not sure
on this. Here's the code for the page generating the error:

<cfquery name="getFeatureDetails" dbtype="ODBC" datasource="newsInfo">

SELECT * FROM features WHERE featureID = #url.featureID#

</cfquery>

<p><span class="pageTitleBlue">News @ Hood: </span><span
class="commSubTitle"><cfif url.type IS 0>
News Releases
<cfelseif url.type IS 1>Campus News</cfif></span></p>

<cfoutput query="getFeatureDetails">
<!--- <TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=6 CELLSPACING=0>
<TR BGCOLOR=##edf0f3><TD><b>Story Details</b></TD></TR>
</TABLE> --->
<p><span class="pressReleaseTitle">#title#</span><br><span
class="pressReleaseDate">#DateFormat(dateAdded)#</span>
<p>#ParagraphFormat(story)#
</CFOUTPUT>


Thanks in advance!!

-Trevor

--
Trevor James
Web Site Manager
Hood College
Office of Marketing and Communications
Frederick, MD 21701

Phone: (301) 696-3846
Email: [email]james@hood.edu[/email]

[BSterner]

I think your problem is with how you're outputting the BLOB data. Don't think
you can just do a..

<cfoutput>#SomeBLOBValue#</cfoutput>

Try using 'toString' function....

<cfoutput>#toString(SomeBLOBValue)#</cfoutput>

[TrevJames]

That worked! I converted the code to this:
#ToString(story)#

The stories are posting now:

[url]http://newdraco.hood.edu/news/index.cfm?pid=_story_details.htm&featureID=1151&ty[/url]
pe=2

However, I'm noticing that some apostrophes are not converting correctly.
You'll notice small question mark icons within the body of the story content.
Any suggestions on how to make these convert?

Thanks!

-Trevor

[PaulH]

encoding issue. what encoding did you use to add the data? what encoding on your cf pages?

might try toString(SomeBLOBValue,"your encoding")

[BSterner]

You can use the replace or replacelist functions to convert any non-printable
characters to printable ones.

eg) #Replace(ToString(story), "`", "'");#

You'll need to find out what the characters being stored in the database are
in order to convert.

btw, that address you posted is not working for me. I tried a dns lookup on
'newdraco.hood.edu' and it found nothing. Is it the same address as
[url]http://hood.edu/news/index.cfm?pid=_story_details.htm&featureID=1151&ty pe=2?[/url]

Can you attach the actual raw data beind returned from the db.

[PaulH]

it's more an issue of encoding than printable vs non-printable. it's generally
a bad idea to replace chars like that. in some instances, say email w/some kind
of corporate compliance rules in place, it might even be illegal. whatever
folks put into a database they should be able to get back, not what the
developer thinks they meant.

[TrevJames]

Paul,

Do you mean the character encoding in the meta info of our site's pages. That's:

charset=iso-8859-1

-Trevor

[TrevJames]

I agree, I'd like to resolve this within our site's code before dealing with
the database. I inherited this application and the text content field was
added to the database as a BLOB specified datatype. I do know that we're using
MySQL version 3.23 and I don't believe that version supports the TEXT datatype.
I'd like to store the data as TEXT but this would require an upgrade to MySQL
4.1 correct?

I believe the character encoding we're using is:
ISO 8859-1

-Trevor

[PaulH]

no, cf ignores the meta header stuff. what encoding did you use in your editor, etc.?

[TrevJames]

I'm taking copy out of a word document. I saved it as plain text and encoded
it as UTF-8 (while saving in word). Then I copied the plain text and pasted
into our CF admin application that we use to enter news items. It's still
displaying apostrophes as boxes (in IE) and diamonds with ? (in Firefox).

I use Dreamweaver as my editor as far as coding HTML and CF. We are running
CF 5.1, but I'm testing out our CF MX 7 server currently. The stories display
without issue on our CF 5.1 server but the character issues are happening on
the new server.

Help!

-Trevor

[PaulH]

well cf5 doesn't know unicode from hole in the ground. making it work in cf5
will bite you in the nether regions later on when you upgrade to cf7.

smart quotes, etc. from word are either unicode or a windows codepage
(probably windows western european) which is a superset of iso-8859-1. if you
need to start this w/cf5 i'd try to replace those chars w/ico-8859-1
equivalents & stay away from utf-8 until you move to mx.

[TrevJames]

I guess I'm getting confused! It is working in CF 5 and has been. It's going
to CF MX which is the problem. I've been copying and pasting content from word
files directly into our news admin section on CF 5 without issue. But now,
when I view the same articles on the CF MX server, I'm getting the character
issues. The issue seems to be moving the ico-8859-1 characters over to CF MX??

-Trevor

[TrevJames]

I just tried adding the following code to my index page (in the news section)
on the new CF MX server:

<cfcontent type="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

Now the news stories are displaying without character issue. The only problem
that remains is the paragraphs are not correct in the story - but this can be
taken care of by adding <p> tags when posting the story. So it looks like this
solves it for now. Basically just specifying not to use UTF on the CF MX
(since that's the default, correct?) - but to use ISO-8859-1 instead.

-Trevor