Transforming XML and preserving Unicode characters (emoji)

[Lisa Smith]

Hello,

My XSLT transformations have been successful for months until I ran across
an XML file with Unicode characters (emoji characters). I need to preserve
the Unicode but XSLT is converting it to HTML Entities. I thought that
setting the encoding to UTF-8 would solve my problem but I'm still having
issues.

If I set the output property OutputKeys.METHOD to "text" the emojis remain,
however all of my XML elements are stripped.  When I set OutputKeys.METHOD
to "xml" the emoji is transformed to HTML Entities.

Any help appreciated. Code:

private byte[] transform(InputStream stream) throws Exception{
    System.setProperty("javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory",
"org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl");

    Transformer xmlTransformer;

    xmlTransformer = (TransformerImpl)
TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer(new
StreamSource(createXsltStylesheet()));
    xmlTransformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");

    XMLStreamReader reader =
XMLInputFactory.newInstance().createXMLStreamReader(stream,"UTF-8");
    Source staxSource = new StAXSource(reader, true);
    ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    Writer writer = new OutputStreamWriter(outputStream, "UTF-8");
    xmlTransformer.transform(staxSource, new StreamResult(writer));


    return outputStream.toByteArray();}


thanks!,

Lisa