Re: Passing unicode strings to prepare method and other unicode questions

Martin Evans wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Increasingly I am getting asked unicode questions and being presented 
> with unicode issues that currently don't work in DBD::ODBC. Currenty 
> DBD::ODBC supports the binding of unicode parameters and the returning 
> of unicode result-set data.
> 
> I would like to change DBD::ODBC to support:
> 
> a) unicode column names (from NAME attribute, column_info etc)
> b) unicode connection strings
> c) unicode SQL
> d) unicode table names (table_info etc)
> 
> Although I don't specifically need unicode connection strings I at least 
> need to turn connection strings usually passed to SQLDriverConnect into 
> ODBC wide characters and call SQLDriverConnectW because without this 
> call other calls to SQLXXXW (wide functions) are mapped to ANSI 
> functions by the ODBC driver manager. Since I need to do this it seemed 
> reasonable to just go the whole way and support unicode connection strings.
> 
> (a) I have implemented and appears to be ok and (d) should be fairly 
> easy too but (b) and (c) are a little trickier with the existing DBI 
> interface (unless I'm mistaken).
> 
> dbd_st_prepare and dbd_db_login6 both take char* and not the original SV 
> so how can I tell if the strings are utf8 encoded or not?
> 
> What I'd like to be able to do (in ODBC terms is):
> 
> In dbd_db_login6
>   test if connection string has utf8 set on it
>   if (utf8on)
>     convert utf8 to utf16 (that is what ODBC wide functions use)
>     call SQLDriverConnectW
>   else
>     call SQLDriverConnect (this is the ANSI version)
> 
> Similarly in prepare where a number of people have unicode column or 
> table names and hence want to do "select unicode_column_name from table".
> 
> Is this what dbd_st_prepare_sv (as opposed to dbd_st_prepare) is for? 
> and should there be a dbd_db_login6_sv?
> 
> Any help would be appreciated.
> 
> Martin

Also, to use dbd_st_prepare_sv am I supposed to add something like the 
following to ODBC.xs:

#include "ODBC.h"
# the following line added:
#define dbd_st_prepare_sv dbd_st_prepare_sv

DBISTATE_DECLARE;

MODULE = DBD::ODBC    PACKAGE = DBD::ODBC

Martin
-- 
Martin J. Evans
Easysoft Limited
http://www.easysoft.com