UTF8 to/from wide char conversion in STL

Question

Is it possible to convert UTF8 string in a std::string to std::wstring and vice versa in a platform independent manner? In a Windows application I would use MultiByteToWideC

Answer 1

You can extract utf8_codecvt_facet from Boost serialization library.

Their usage example:

  typedef wchar_t ucs4_t;

  std::locale old_locale;
  std::locale utf8_locale(old_locale,new utf8_codecvt_facet);

  // Set a New global locale
  std::locale::global(utf8_locale);

  // Send the UCS-4 data out, converting to UTF-8
  {
    std::wofstream ofs("data.ucd");
    ofs.imbue(utf8_locale);
    std::copy(ucs4_data.begin(),ucs4_data.end(),
          std::ostream_iterator(ofs));
  }

  // Read the UTF-8 data back in, converting to UCS-4 on the way in
  std::vector from_file;
  {
    std::wifstream ifs("data.ucd");
    ifs.imbue(utf8_locale);
    ucs4_t item = 0;
    while (ifs >> item) from_file.push_back(item);
  }

Look for utf8_codecvt_facet.hpp and utf8_codecvt_facet.cpp files in boost sources.