How to save an ANSI file from Business Central?

MortenSteengaard

Hi experts,

This is regarding Business Central cloud.

When I make a file, I can set the encoding to Windows, UTF-8, UTF-16 and MSDOS.

Our customer need a file with ANSI encoding.

How do I do that?

Hope, you can help.

Morten

MortenSteengaard

Hi SanderDk and vaprog,

Thank you for your reply.

Since Microsoft don't support making an ANSI encoded file (with our local, Danish, letters), I have made it myself (with a little help from my friend, Erik Hougaard on YouTube).

This way it is working fine and our customer does not have to pay for the Azure functions.

I saw how Erik Hougaard made an app that created a WAVE file and I used that to make the code below. I know it does not support all letters and signs, but this is what the customer is willing to pay for - and it is all they need.

procedure SaveAnsiEncodedTextFileFromTempBlob(var TempBlobLocal: Codeunit "Temp Blob"; FileName: Text)
var
    InStream, IStream : InStream;
    OutStream: OutStream;
    TempBlobLocal2: Codeunit "Temp Blob";
    TextToWrite: Text;
    i: Integer;
    Byte1, Byte2, Byte3, Byte4, Byte5, Byte6 : Byte;
begin
    // Read text from TempBlob
    TempBlobLocal.CreateInStream(InStream, TextEncoding::UTF8);
    InStream.ReadText(TextToWrite);

    TempBlobLocal2.CreateOutStream(OutStream);

    Byte1 := 230; // æ
    Byte2 := 248; // ø
    Byte3 := 229; // å
    Byte4 := 198; // Æ
    Byte5 := 216; // Ø
    Byte6 := 197; // Å

    for i := 1 to StrLen(TextToWrite) do begin
        if TextToWrite = 'æ' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte1)
        else if TextToWrite = 'ø' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte2)
        else if TextToWrite = 'å' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte3)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Æ' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte4)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Ø' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte5)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Å' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte6)
        else
            OutStream.Write(TextToWrite);
    end;

    // Save the file
    TempBlobLocal2.CreateInStream(IStream);

    DownloadFromStream(IStream, '', '', '', FileName);
end;

SanderDk

Hi @MortenSteengaard,
According to MS Docs the Windows format is ANSI :
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/developer/devenv-file-handling-and-text-encoding?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003099#windows-format

MortenSteengaard

Hi SanderDk,
Thank you for your reply.
You are right, but when I save the file on my local computer, open it in Notepad and select "Save as", then I can see that it is "UTF-8".
The file must be imported into "EG Lønservice" and the letters æ, ø and å are not correct after the import.
If I manually make a text file with ANSI encoding using Notepad, then it works fine.
Best regards,
Morten

vaprog

So, how do you create the file? How do you tell the system to create the file with Windows encoding?

MortenSteengaard

Hi vaprog,
I have the data in a Temp Blob and save it to a file like this:

TempBlob.CreateInStream(IStream, TEXTENCODING::Windows);
//TempBlob.CreateInStream(IStream, TEXTENCODING::UTF8);
//TempBlob.CreateInStream(IStream, TEXTENCODING::MSDos);

Filename := 'Test.txt';
DownloadFromStream(IStream, '', '', '', Filename);

vaprog

I would expect what you do to work correctly. If it does not, I'd write to a tempfile, then download that tempfile. This way you can set the TEXTENCODING on the outstream.

MortenSteengaard

Hi SanderDk and vaprog,

Thank you for your reply.

Since Microsoft don't support making an ANSI encoded file (with our local, Danish, letters), I have made it myself (with a little help from my friend, Erik Hougaard on YouTube).

This way it is working fine and our customer does not have to pay for the Azure functions.

I saw how Erik Hougaard made an app that created a WAVE file and I used that to make the code below. I know it does not support all letters and signs, but this is what the customer is willing to pay for - and it is all they need.

procedure SaveAnsiEncodedTextFileFromTempBlob(var TempBlobLocal: Codeunit "Temp Blob"; FileName: Text)
var
    InStream, IStream : InStream;
    OutStream: OutStream;
    TempBlobLocal2: Codeunit "Temp Blob";
    TextToWrite: Text;
    i: Integer;
    Byte1, Byte2, Byte3, Byte4, Byte5, Byte6 : Byte;
begin
    // Read text from TempBlob
    TempBlobLocal.CreateInStream(InStream, TextEncoding::UTF8);
    InStream.ReadText(TextToWrite);

    TempBlobLocal2.CreateOutStream(OutStream);

    Byte1 := 230; // æ
    Byte2 := 248; // ø
    Byte3 := 229; // å
    Byte4 := 198; // Æ
    Byte5 := 216; // Ø
    Byte6 := 197; // Å

    for i := 1 to StrLen(TextToWrite) do begin
        if TextToWrite = 'æ' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte1)
        else if TextToWrite = 'ø' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte2)
        else if TextToWrite = 'å' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte3)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Æ' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte4)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Ø' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte5)
        else if TextToWrite = 'Å' then
            OutStream.Write(Byte6)
        else
            OutStream.Write(TextToWrite);
    end;

    // Save the file
    TempBlobLocal2.CreateInStream(IStream);

    DownloadFromStream(IStream, '', '', '', FileName);
end;