Recommended method for handling UnsupportedEncodingException from String.getBytes("UTF-8")

character-encoding, java, string

Solution

You know what I do?

return "blah".getBytes( Charset.forName( "UTF-8" ) );

This one doesn't throw a checked exception.

Update: Since Java 1.7, we have StandardCharsets.

return "blah".getBytes( StandardCharsets.UTF_8 );

Problem

What is the recommended way to handle an UnsupportedEncodingException when calling String.getBytes("UTF-8") inside a library method? If I'm reading http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/intl/encoding.doc.html correctly, UTF-8 encoding should always be available, which leads me to believe there's no reason to pass this exception on to the library's consumer (that is, add a `throws` clause to the method signature). It seems any failure mode that made UTF-8 encoding facilities unavailable would be catastrophic, leading me to write this handler: ``` try { .... return "blah".getBytes("UTF-8"); } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { // we're assuming UTF-8 encoding is always available. // see // http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/intl/encoding.doc.html e.printStackTrace(); return null; //prevent compile-time "method must return a result" errors } ``` Is there a failure mode that wouldn't be addressed by this snippet?

Original source