HTTP GET request charset/encoding problem with special characters

[dantearaujo]

Describe the problem/error/question

I am getting some special characters problem when doing a GET HTTP resquest to a URL.

For example: a GET to this URL: Lâmpada LED Tubo T8 18W 120cm 6500K Brilia Em Oferta | ALED

Is resulting in the characters problem below, I need them to be the right brazilian portuguese characters:

Please share your workflow

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version: 1.33.1
• Database (default: SQLite): Postgres
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): queue
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker/Railway

[mariana-na]

Hi @dantearaujo!

Welcome to the community!

The HTTP Request node is reading the site’s content type as it is displayed. And the site’s encoding is in iso-8859-1, which is a bit old school. n8n uses UTF-8.

In order to convert the content type you’d need to install a library like iconv-lite and then add a Code Node to your workflow to convert the source code into UTF-8.

This will only work on a self-hosted environment, so good thing you’re already hosting

If you want to go down that route, you can follow this article to help you set up the library.
This community post also has some useful info on importing a library to use in the Code Node

Hope this helps!

Happy Building!

[dantearaujo]

Thanks a lot!