[Python-Dev] Encoding detection in the standard library?

[Bill Janssen]

martin at v.loewis.de writes:
> > When a web browser POSTs data, there is no standard way of communicating
> > which encoding it's using.
> 
> That's just not true. Web browser should and do use the encoding of the
> web page that originally contained the form.

I wonder if the discussion is confusing two different things.  Take a
look at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4>.

There are two prescribed ways of sending form data:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded, which can only be used with ASCII
data, and multipart/form-data.  ``The content type
"multipart/form-data" should be used for submitting forms that contain
files, non-ASCII data, and binary data.''

It's true that the page containing the form may specify which of these
two forms to use, but the character encodings are determined by the
choice.

> For web forms, I always encode the pages in UTF-8, and that always
> works.

Should work, if you use the "multipart/form-data" format.

Bill