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Add meta tag with charset information to application layout. 
Previously, our default HTML would validate properly, but would generate
a warning: it doesn't declare a character encoding.

According to [the spec][encoding-spec], if you don't specify an
encoding, a 7 step algorithm happens, with a toooon of sub-steps. Or, we
could just actually specify it.

Since everything else in Rails assumes UTF-8, we should make sure pages
are served with that encoding too. This meta tag is the simplest way to
accomplish this.

More resources:

* http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-character-encoding
* http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/
* http://validator.w3.org/

[encoding-spec]: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/parsing.html#determining-the-character-encoding
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@steveklabnik
steveklabnik committed Sep 10, 2013
1 parent e7facb3 commit ba0407337e93c4ef55cef3472143f62e8a984a64
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 0 deletions.
1 railties/lib/rails/generators/rails/app/templates/app/views/layouts/application.html.erb.tt
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@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title><%= camelized %></title>
<%- if options[:skip_javascript] -%>
<%%= stylesheet_link_tag "application", media: "all" %>

4 comments on commit ba04073

@jeremy
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@jeremy jeremy commented on ba04073 Sep 10, 2013

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According to [the spec][encoding-spec], if you don't specify an
encoding, a 7 step algorithm happens, with a toooon of sub-steps. Or, we
could just actually specify it.

This makes it sound like adding the meta element bypasses the HTML5 charset determination. Rails already serves content using utf-8 charset, and that's checked before parsing the HTML.

For even quicker determination, use a UTF-8 BOM.

👎 on this; it's not needed.

@steveklabnik
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What do you mean by 'rails serves'? Wouldn't this be the webserver's responsibility? Or do you mean we add a header by default in the right place?

I prefer this way because there's less moving parts, but I can see how a reasonable person would disagree.

@nimf
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@nimf nimf commented on ba04073 Sep 11, 2013

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I'm always adding this myself 👍

@tenderlove
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@steveklabnik Rails sends the encoding along with the content-type header back to the proxy. We default it to utf-8. However, if you override the content-type header all bets are off.

I'm reverting this because if someone sets the charset on the response (like you're currently supposed to do) to something other than utf-8, then this tag will be wrong.

One improvement I suggest that we make is to make the charset respect the external encoding settings. I'm not sure why we don't do that (it seems like a bug).

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