c# How to encode arabic characters to utf8?

Question

i try to encode Arabic characters to utf8 as sample

string clientName="على";
Encoding iso = Encoding.GetEncoding(1256);
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8;
byte[] utfBytes = utf8.GetBytes(clientName);
byte[] isoBytes = Encoding.Convert(utf8, iso, utfBytes);
string clientNameArabic = iso.GetString(isoBytes);

but i think it is not correct so, i need help

Solution

You don't need to convert your string to Windows-1256 charset. It's just:

// on server side(before sending as byte array)
var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(clientName);

// on client side(after reciving byte array)
clientName = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);

Also in most situation's(except when using very low-level IO, like network sockets, or binary file streams) you don't need to think about encoding conversion at all, because UTF-8 is default encoding that used in .NET high-level I/O operations.

---

To accomplish your weird task of converting normal Unicode string على to broken mojibake with symbols like Óèïåçäèðÿ you should write your string using Arabic Windows Encoding(1256), then read it back using Western European Windows Encoding(1252) like this:

var source = "على";

var westernLatin = Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);
var arabic = Encoding.GetEncoding(1256);

var bytes = arabic.GetBytes(source);
var result = westernLatin.GetString(bytes); // Uáì

No need to use UTF-8 here.

Comments

[Paradigm]

result is : clientName is same before encoding

[rufanov]

@Paradigm, yes, as it should. Or you expected something else?

[Paradigm]

i expected characters like Óèïåçäèðÿ

[rufanov]

@Paradigm, ehm... for what purpose? Just for fun? Or to prank some client with "ah, it's weird characters on screen! your data is totally broken! pay us for repair!"?

[rufanov]

@Paradigm, i updated answer with solution to your task.