Node: converting utf8 string to base64 to upload a

Question

I'm not sure if this question is specific to Parse.com or a problem with my (basic) understanding of NodeJS encoding.

I've been using Parse to upload text files - this is working great but it looks like the file contents are not UTF8 encoded (based on what I see from the data explorer in my browser).

Is there something I should be doing before saving the file to ensure the text is stored as unicode?

The code I'm using to upload is:

//test string
var a = '検索 • Busca • Sök • 搜尋 • Tìm kiếm • Пошук';

//trying to convert to base64
var buff = new Buffer(a, 'utf8').toString("base64");

var parseFile = new Parse.File("test.txt", {
    base64: buff
}, 'text/plain');

//saves successfully
parseFile.save().then(function() {
    var Test = Parse.Object.extend('Testing');
    var uv = new Test();
    uv.set('hello', parseFile);
    return uv.save(null, {});


}).then(function() {
    console.log('Saved');
}, function(error) {
    console.error(JSON.stringify(error));
});

When I look at test.txt from the data explorer, I see:

検索 • Busca • Sök • æœå°‹ • Tìm kiếm • Пошук

When I try to use the same code above to save to disk using require('fs'), everything works as expected.

Answer 1

The data explorer you're using thinks the file is UTF-16 bytes encoded into Base-64 (this can easily be verified). You shouldn't worry, the data is correct, the representation is wrong. The data viewer isn't going to change your data, so it doesn't matter.