Character Encoding of vatsim-data.txt

[David Zhong]

I get weird symbols when processing vatsim-data.txt depending on encoding (see picture below). What character encoding is everyone else using?

 

My primary concern at the moment is the line delimiter for controller info. My http library gives me 0xFFA7 (wchar) but it is displayed in my browser as 0xA7.

 

http library (stores as std::wstring/wchar_t):

 

Browser (chrome):

[Mike Evans]

The latter is what the data server spits out.

[David Zhong]

Thanks Mike. Time to wrestle with the library

[David Zhong]

Found the bug in the library. Apparently signedness is important when doing type casting.

 

Speaking of libraries, it might be worthwhile to collect libraries for processing the data server output on the gitlab. A quick search only finds one (apparently) unmaintained php library, which indicates that everyone is "rolling their own" which (a) is a waste of time and (b) more importantly, increases the chance of applications not following the rules. What are the chances of providing limited public access to the VATSIM gitlab?

[Pierre Ferran]

A few libraries are available on GitHub, some of them maintained, for instance

 

https://github.com/tarakanbg/vatsim_online

https://github.com/skymeyer/Vatsimphp