Apache NiFi: Enabling Unicode Support

If you’re using Apache NiFi to move data around, you might stumble upon Unicode characters turning into question marks. For example, the ExecuteSQL processor does that. To fix this you have to set JVM’s default encoding to UTF-8.

There are two ways of doing it:

1. Set default encoding using the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable:

   export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=utf8
   

2. Add default encoding parameter to NiFi’s bootstrap.conf file:

   java.arg.8=-Dfile.encoding=UTF8
   

Of course, adjust the argument’s number according to your configuration.

That’s it, no more question marks.