1) Versions: Postgres V 8.4.12. Perl V 5.14.2. DBI V 1.622. DBD::Pg V 2.19.2. DBIx::Class V 0.08196. JSON::XS V 2.32. JSON::Syck not tried. Plack V 0.9988. YUI V 3.5.1.

2) Postgres database creation command line:

  psql=# create database novels owner ron encoding 'UTF8';
[download]

3) CSV file (606 lines, 1 sample):

  "author","category","title","rating","comment","isbn","publisher","p
+ublication_date","review_date"
  "Colm Tóibín","Novel","The South","***","-","-","Picador","-","2012-
+06-12"
[download]

4) Importing from that CSV file and exporting to Postgres:

  use feature 'unicode_strings';
  use open qw/:std :utf8/;
  ...
  # DBIx::Class:
  my($rs) = $schema -> resultset('Author');
  my($result);
  for (sort keys %$data)
  {
    $result = $rs -> create({name => $_, upper_name => uc $_});
  }
[download]

Note: Encode qw/decode encode/ not used.

5) Postgres search command line:

  novels=# select * from authors where name like 'Colm%';
   id  |    name     | upper_name
  -----+-------------+-------------
   100 | Colm Tóibín | COLM TóIBíN
  (1 row)
[download]

So far, so good.

6) Perl command line test script to read db:

  use feature qw/say unicode_strings/;
  use open qw/:std :utf8/;
  use Encode qw/decode encode/;
  ...
  my($row)    = $sth -> fetchall_hashref('id');
  my($name)   = $$row{100}{name};
  my($decode) = decode('utf8', $name);
  my($json)   = JSON::XS -> new -> utf8(0) -> encode({name => $decode}
+);

  say "name:   $name.";
  say "decode: $decode.";
  say "json:   $json.";
[download]

7) Output of (6):

  ron@zigzag:~/perl.modules/Local-Novels$ perl scripts/test.utf8.pl
  name:   Colm Tóibín.
  decode: Colm Tóibín.
  json:   {"name":"Colm Tóibín"}.
[download]

So far, so good.

8) Conclusion (after trying many combinations :-(): I need JSON's utf8(0) and encode() acting on the decoded database field to get the expected JSON output: json: {"name":"Colm Tóibín"}.

9) But, if I use decode('utf8', ...) and utf8(0) for an AJAX call under Plack here's what happens. The HTML page contains:

  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /
+>
[download]

Now for the Perl:

  use feature 'unicode_strings';
  use Encode 'decode';
  ...
  while (my $item = $rs -> next)
  {
      push @$result,
      {
          author_name => decode('utf8', $item -> author -> name),
  ...
      }
  }
  ...
  $output = {results => $result};

  return JSON::XS -> new -> utf8(0) -> encode($output);
[download]

Plack reports: Body must be bytes and should not contain wide characters (UTF-8 strings) at...

If I keep Plack happy with:

  return JSON::XS -> new -> utf8(1) -> encode($output);
[download]

The displayed value for author's name is: Colm Tóibín

What to do?

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