How to make sure my created filedownload is UTF-8? (and not UTF-8 without BOM)

Question

i\'ve made a download function to download messages to a CSV file (code is below). Now when i open it up in notepad or notepad++ i see this:

é NY ø ╬ ║► ░ ê ö

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Answer 1

You could simplify your code a little:

public ActionResult DownloadPersonalMessages()
{
    StringBuilder myCsv = new StringBuilder();
    myCsv.Append(new DownloadService().GetPersonalMessages());
    Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=PersonalMessages.csv");
    return File(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(myCsv.ToString()), "text/csv");
}

As far as the UTF-8 encoding is concerned I am afraid the problem might be in this GetPersonalMessages method. You might need to return a stream or byte array which you could directly return as file.