UnicodeOverride is a plugin for Rails 2.3.x that ensures UTF-8 strings are always returned with their encoding set to UTF-8. This allows your application to be moved to ruby 1.9.x theoretically seamlessly, hopefully without agonizing pain.
For ruby 1.8.x, it does nothing, so your application will continue working under it.
Just Put It In Your vendor/plugins™
• String#force_utf8!
Strings get a force_utf8! method. This is used internally but might be fun
for everyone. What it does is: when a string forms a valid UTF-8 string, its
encoding gets forced to UTF-8, otherwise the original encoding is kept.
Always returns self.
• Any ActiveRecord attribute that is a string gets sent force_utf8!. This is
achieved by defining an after_find method which acts during object
instantiation. If you define after_find in your own code, be mindful of
this and use alias_method_chain if needed.
• All Rails built-in helpers are enveloped. When they return a string,
force_utf8! is sent to it before it's returned.
So what we do is we fix strings coming from built-in helpers or from ActiveRecord objects.
Copyright © 2010 Caio Chassot, released under the MIT license