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UTF-8 Support in Quickbase

Quickbase does not yet fully offer internationalization (i18n) and localization (L10n). There are many aspects to supporting non-US English applications, including data storage and presentation of different types.

Quickbase is working toward fuller i18n / l10n support. As of now, customers can change character encoding to UTF-8 from ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252, which allows storing data in UTF-8 format. However, functions in Quickbase may not behave as expected. For instance, searching based on UTF-8 may not work, and sort order may not be in the expected order based on the language.

Platform Support

  • By default, data and schema entered in Quickbase apps use ASCII character encoding (If you're not sure what counts as an ASCII character, see this table for valid ACSII examples).
  • App-level, force UTF-8: This forces browser and RESTful API encoding for data and schemas in each application to be in UTF-8. This setting is only available when the realm-level setting below is not enabled. App administrators will be able to turn this setting on or off.
  • Realm-level, force UTF-8: This forces browser, XML APIs and RESTful API encoding for data and schemas in each application in the realm and all additional properties (such as user profiles) to be in UTF-8. By putting in a support case, Quickbase Care can turn this setting on or off.

Below is a list of supported configurations and features. Any features not listed here may work inconsistently or not as expected and should not be relied on for production workloads. Quickbase will update this page periodically as new support is added. Currently, only the JSON Handler channel supports UTF-8.

 

  UI XML API RESTful API Additional Services Pipelines
With App Flag

  • Record CRUD

  • Generally Accessible Reports

  • App Schema

  • Dashboards

 Read-only XML APIs for data or schema

  • Read data and schema via RESTful APIs

  • Write data and schema via RESTful APIs

   All Steps in your Quickbase Channel except triggers can read UTF-8 non-English characters.
With Realm Flag
  • Record CRUD
  • Generally Accessible Reports
  • App Schema
  • Dashboards
  • User profiles
  • Realm branding

  • Read data and schema via XML APIs

  • Write data and schema via XML APIs

  • Read data and schema via RESTful APIs

  • Write data and schema via RESTful APIs

Quickbase connected tables
Note: Connected tables created before UTF-8 was enabled may experience issues. Non-ASCII characters may become mangled, and must be corrected before the connected table can successfully refresh. Learn more about resolving mixed encoding issues.

 All Steps in your Quickbase Channel except triggers can read/write UTF-8 non-English characters.

These settings only apply to entering or displaying UTF-8 data. This setting does not apply to operations you perform on UTF-8 data, such as searching and sorting records, or setting custom permissions based on field values. For example, a form rule that performs show/hide on non-ASCII characters will work fine. However, a form rule that says “When [product name] contains , change the value in the field [contains utf-8?] to true” may not behave as expected.

Toggling this setting does not change the encoding for any existing data or schema. ASCII characters should continue to function normally. Quickbase users may experience character inconsistencies if there are any data or schemas with encoding other than ASCII or UTF-8. The following image shows the UTF-8 check box:

Enabling support

To enable support at the app level:

  1. Click App Settings, then App Properties

  2. Click the checkbox marked This controls whether Quickbase forces UTF-8 encoding in this app. It can't be used when the entire realm is forced to use UTF-8.

 

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