Encode a string in UTF-8

Question

I want to encode a string into UTF8 in PowerShell.

This is what I tried:

$consumer_key ="xvz1evFS4wEEPTGEFPHBog"
$enc_consumer_key = System.Text.UTF8Encoding($consumer_key)

But I get an error:

System.Text.UTF8Encoding in not recognize as the name of cmdlet

Answer 1

Try this instead:

$enc = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8
$consumerkey ="xvz1evFS4wEEPTGEFPHBog"
$encconsumerkey= $enc.GetBytes($consumerkey)

Answer 2

If you just want to write the string to file:

$consumer_key ="xvz1evFS4wEEPTGEFPHBog"
$consumer_key |  Out-File c:\path\utf8file.txt -Encoding UTF8

Answer 3

Encode/Decode:

$enc = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes("â")
# 195 162
[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($enc)
# â
[System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($enc)
# ??
[System.Text.Encoding]::Default.GetString($enc) # Windows-1252
# â

This is the best question I search that lead me to the above solution for text encoding/decoding characters in PowerShell. In my case I was trying to debug malformed UTF8 characters. Hope it helps someone in the future.

-Check that BOM