WebSEAL data handling by using UTF-8

WebSEAL implements multi-locale support by internally maintaining and handling all data by using UCS Transformation Format 8 byte (UTF-8) encoding. UTF-8 is a multi-byte code page with variable width. WebSEAL adopts UTF-8 as the default code page for all internal data handling. This support enables WebSEAL to process data from multiple languages at the same time. WebSEAL administrators can configure how WebSEAL handles data input and output. An example of data input is characters that are sent to WebSEAL by a browser, such as user logins and forms data. An example of data output is logging information that is written out to the file system by the ISAM event-logging manager. WebSEAL handles data internally in UTF-8 regardless of the locale in which the WebSEAL process is running. When locale-specific data is needed as input or output, the locale in which the WebSEAL process is running becomes important. The locale consists of two parts: the language and the local code page. Local code pages can be UTF-8 or not UTF-8. Historically, most operating systems use a local code page that is not UTF-8. For example, a common local code page used to represent the 8-bit ASCII character set for United States English is en_US.ISO88591, which uses the ISO-8859-1 character set.

The appliance utilizes a UTF-8 code page. If WebSEAL needs to be run using a different code page, the LC_ALL environment variable, located in the [system-environment-variables] configuration stanza, should be set to the desired locale. For example:

[system-environment-variables]
LC_ALL = ja_JP.eucjp

Administrators running systems that need to process client requests and forms data in a different code page can modify the default settings for URL support (utf8-url-support-enabled) and forms support (utf8-forms-support-enabled). The default WebSEAL setting is to process data in UTF-8 format only. For example, we might need to change default settings for systems that process client requests and forms data that uses non-UTF-8 local code pages. For example:

• A single-byte Latin character set, such as Spanish, French, or German
• A multi-byte character set, such as Japanese or Chinese

If we are running systems that need to provide true multi-locale support to handle users and data in multiple languages, review the following settings:

• The default WebSEAL multi-locale UTF-8 settings.

We can customize these configuration settings to best fit your deployment.

Parent topic: Web server configuration

Related concepts

• Content caching
• Communication protocol configuration
• IPv4 and IPv6 overview
• IPv6: Compatibility support
• IP levels for credential attributes
• LDAP directory server configuration
• WebSEAL worker thread configuration
• WebSEAL worker threads
• Global allocation of worker threads for junctions
• Per-junction allocation of worker threads for junctions
• HTTP data compression
• UTF-8 dependency on user registry configuration
• UTF-8 data conversion issues
• UTF-8 impact on authentication
• UTF-8 impact on authorization (dynamic URL)
• Encoding type usage
• UTF-8 support for uniform resource locators
• UTF-8 support in POST body information (forms)
• UTF-8 support in query strings
• UTF-8 encoding of tokens for cross domain single signon
• UTF-8 encoding of tokens for e-community single signon
• UTF-8 encoding of cookies for failover authentication
• UTF-8 encoding of cookies for LTPA authentication
• UTF-8 encoding in junction requests
• Validation of character encoding in request data
• Set system environment variables
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) Support

Related tasks

• Specify the WebSEAL host name
• Modify the configuration file settings
• Configure WebSEAL for IPv6 and IPv4 requests

Related reference

• IPv6: Upgrade notes
• Allocation view of worker threads for junctions
• Supported wildcard pattern matching characters