StreamReader(), System.Text.Encoding and German character Ä.

[snedster]

I am consuming data from a web service, and the data is going through a soap extension. Currently it has TextReader reader = new StreamReader(fr om) where from is a Stream. This works great for most values, but when I reach a à characters it shows as a question mark. I updated to StreamReader(fr om, System.Text.Enc oding.Default) and now the à shows correctly, but characters such as Japanese or Chinese or Unicode do not show correctly.
In php I have solved this issue using mbstring functions such as mb_detect_encod ing and mb_check_encodi ng.

The data has a UTF-8 header.
Is there a way that I can reliably detect what type of encoding to declare for the StreamReader so that the correct characters will always show?
Thanks for any info.

[Plater]

If the data is always utf-8, use the utf8 encoding?
The webservice should declare what encoding type it uses

[snedster]

When I set the reader to UTF8 then the à characters turn into �

[Plater]

What are you using to view them? The debugger? Notepad?

[snedster]

I do not use notepad because if you type "this app can break" and save it and open it, the characters show as squares in a 32 bit system :) So their character encoding detection seems to be faulty :)

The data from the web service is being inserted into Excel, so that is where I am viewing the data. But the data is also printed in the console in debug mode and written to a file as well.

I did see this post here, but it did not help with unicode characters.

http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/521848-streamreader-system-text-encoding-german-character

[Plater]

Hmm have you tried adjusting the font?