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How to set character encoding for PDFBox

I'm bulding a pdf-parser using Apache PDFBox, after parsing the plain text i run some algorithms and in the end output a json-file. For some pdf files the output file contains utf-8 encoding, for other pdfs it contains some form of what seems to be latin-1 encoding (spaces show up as "\xa0" when the json-file is opened in python). I assume this must be a consequence of the fonts or some other characteristic of the pdf?
My code to read the plain text is as follows
PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(file);
//Instantiate PDFTextStripper class
PDFTextStripper pdfStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
//Retrieving text from PDF document
String text = pdfStripper.getText(document);
//Closing the document
document.close();
I've tried just saving the plain text:
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(outPath + ".txt");
out.print(text);
Even opening this plain text file in python yields "\xa0" characters instead of space if the file is read into a dictionary , yielding the following results:
dict_keys(['1.\xa0\lorem\xa0ipsum', '2.\xa0\lorem\xa0ipsum\xa0\lorem\xa0ipsum', '3.\xa0\lorem', '4.\xa0\lorem\xa0ipsum', '5.\xa0\lorem\xa0ipsum'])
I'd like to make sure the text always gets encoded as utf-8. How do I go about doing this?

I'd like to make sure the text always gets encoded as utf-8. How do I go about doing this?
If you want to make sure your PrintWriter uses UTF-8 encoding, say so in the constructor:
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(outPath + ".txt", "UTF-8");

character ° encoding and visualization in txt file

I have a field in a table that contains the string "Address Pippo p.2 °".
My program read this value and write it into txt file, but the output is:
"Address Pippo p.2 °" ( is unwanted)
I have a problem because the txt file is a positional file.
I open the file with these Java istructions:
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(file, true);
pw = new PrintWriter(fw);
I want to write the string without strange characters
Any help for me ?
Thanks in advance

Try encoding the string into UTF-8 like this,
File file = new File("D://test.txt");
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(file, true);
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(fw);
String test = "Address Pippo p.2 °";
ByteBuffer byteBuffer = Charset.forName("UTF-8").encode(test);
test = StandardCharsets.UTF_8.decode(byteBuffer).toString();
pw.write(test);
pw.close();

Java uses Unicode. When you write text to a file, it gets encoded using a particular character encoding. If you don't specify it explicitly, it will use a "system default encoding" which is whatever is configured as default for your particular JVM instance. You need to know what encoding you've used to write the file. Then you need to use the same encoding to read and display the file content. The funny characters you are seeing are probably due to writing the file using UTF-8 and then trying to read and display it in e.g. Notepad using Windows-1252 ("ANSI") encoding.
Decide what encoding you want and stick to it for both reading and writing. To write using Windows-1252, use:
Writer w = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileInputStream(file, true), "windows-1252");
And if you write in UTF-8, then tell Notepad that you want it to read the file in UTF-8. One way to do that is to write the character '\uFEFF' (Byte Order Mark) at the beginning of the file.
If you use UTF-8, be aware that non-ASCII characters will throw the subsequent bytes out of position. So if, for example, a telephone field must always start at byte position 200, then having a non-ASCII character in an address field before it will make the telephone field start at byte position 201 or 202. Using windows-1252 encoding you won't have this issue, but that encoding can't encode all Unicode characters.

Handling Norwegian and Icelandic letters in Java

In Java,
I am receiving an text input which contains Norwegian Characters and Icelandic characters.
I get a stream and then parse it to String and assign to some variables and again create output.
When i make output, Norwegian and Icelandic characters get distorted and get some ? or ¶ etc. Output files also get same character when opened.
I am making web project .war using Maven. What basic settings are required for Icelandic/Norwegian Text in Coding?
I get a method of setting Locale but unable to produce output using it. Locale.setDefault(new Locale("is_IS", "Iceland"));
Kindly Suggest. How to do it?
Actual Character: HÝS048
Distorted Character: HÃ?S048 (when SOUT directly) or H??S048 (when i get bytes from string and put into string object using UTF-8)
Update (11:13)
I have used
CharsetEncoder encoder = Charset.forName("UTF-8").newEncoder();
encoder.onMalformedInput(CodingErrorAction.REPORT);
encoder.onUnmappableCharacter(CodingErrorAction.REPORT);
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("d:\\try1.csv"),encoder));
out.write(sb.toString());
out.flush();
out.close();
Output: H�S048
Update (12:41):
While reading stream from HTTP source i have used following:
`BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(apiURL.openStream(), "UTF-8"));`
It perfectly shows output on Console.
I have fetched value of CSV and put it in after logics Bean.
Now I need to create CSV file but when i get values from bean it again gives distorted text. I am using StringBuilder to append the values of bean and write it to file. :( Hope for best. Looking for ideas

The solution to this problem is to get data in UTF-8, print it in UTF-8 and to create file in UTF-8
Read data from URL as below:
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(apiURL.openStream(), "UTF-8"));
Then set it to beans or do whatever you want. While printing
System.out.println(new String(sb.toString().getBytes("UTF-8"),"UTF-8"));
Then while creating file again:
FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("d:\\try2.csv");
writer.append(new String(sb.toString().getBytes("UTF-8"),"UTF-8"));
writer.flush();
writer.close();
This is how my problem got resolved.

Java Unicode to readable text conversion decoding

I am developing a Java application where I am consuming a web service. The web service is created using a SAP server, which encodes the data automatically in Unicode. I get a Unicode string from the web service.
"
倥䙄ㄭ㌮਍쿣ී㈊〠漠橢਍圯湩湁楳湅潣楤杮਍湥潤橢਍″‰扯൪㰊഼┊敄瑶灹⁥佐呓′†䘠湯⁴佃剕䕉⁒渠牯慭慌杮䔠ൎ⼊祔数⼠潆瑮਍匯扵祴数⼠祔数റ⼊慂敳潆瑮⼠潃牵敩൲⼊慎敭⼠う㄰਍䔯据摯湩⁧′‰൒㸊ാ攊摮扯൪㐊〠漠橢਍㰼਍䰯湥瑧⁨‵‰൒㸊ാ猊牴慥൭ 䘯〰‱⸱2
"
above is the response.
I want to convert it to readable text format like String. I am using core Java.

倥䙄ㄭ㌮਍쿣ී㈊〠漠橢਍圯湩湁楳湅潣楤杮਍湥潤橢਍″‰扯൪㰊഼┊敄瑶灹⁥佐呓′†䘠湯⁴佃剕䕉⁒渠牯慭慌杮䔠ൎ⼊祔数⼠潆瑮਍匯扵祴数⼠祔数റ⼊慂敳潆瑮⼠潃牵敩൲⼊慎敭⼠う㄰਍䔯据摯湩⁧′‰൒㸊ാ攊摮扯൪㐊〠漠橢਍㰼਍䰯湥瑧⁨‵‰൒㸊ാ猊牴慥൭ 䘯〰‱⸱2
That's a PDF file that has been interpreted as UTF-16LE.
You need to look at what component is receiving the response and how it's dealing with the input to stop it being decoded as UTF-16LE, but ultimately there isn't a 'readable' version of it as such, as it's a binary file. Extracting the document text out of a PDF file is a much bigger problem!
(Note: Unicode is a character set, UTF-16LE is an encoding of that set into bytes. Microsoft call the UTF-16LE encoding "Unicode" due to a historical accident, but that's misleading.)

If you have byte[] or an InputStream (both binary data) you can get a String or a Reader (both text) with:
final String encoding = "UTF-8"; // "UTF16LE" or "UTF-16BE"
byte[] b = ...;
String s = new String(b, encoding);
InputStream is = ...;
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, encoding));
for (;;) {
String line = reader.readLine();
}
The reverse process uses:
byte[] b = s.geBytes(encoding);
OutputStream os = ...;
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new OuputStreamWriter(os, encoding));
writer.println(s);
Unicode is a numbering system for all characters. The UTF variants implement Unicode as bytes.
Your problem:
In normal ways (web service), you would already have received a String. You could write that string to a file using the Writer above for instance. Either to check it yourself with a full Unicode font, or to pass the file on for a check.
You need (?) to check, which UTF variant the text is in. For Asiatic scripts UTF-16 (little endian or big endian) are optimal. In XML it would be defined already.
Addition:
FileWriter writes to a file using the default encoding (from operating system on your machine). Instead use:
new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(new File("...")), "UTF-8")
If it is a binary PDF, as #bobince said, use just a FileOutputStream on byte[] or InputStream.

This is definitely not a valid string. This looks like mangled UTF-16.
UPDATE
Indeed #Bobince is right, this is a PDF file (most probably in UTF-8 / or plain ASCII) displayed in UTF-16. When Displayed in UTF-8 this string indeed shows PDF source code. Good catch.

UTF8 convertion for text obtained from internet

ElasticSearch is a search Server which accepts data only in UTF8.
When i tries to give ElasticSearch following text
Small businesses potentially in line for a lighter reporting load include those with an annual turnover of less than £440,000, net assets of less than £220,000 and fewer than ten employees"
Through my java application - Basically my java application takes this info from a webpage , and gives it to elasticSearch. ES complaints it cant understand £ and it fails. After filtering through below code -
byte bytes[] = s.getBytes("ISO-8859-1");
s = new String(bytes, "UTF-8");
Here £ is converted to �
But then when I copy it to a file in my home directory using bash and it goes in fine. Any pointers will help.

You have ISO-8895-1 octets in bytes, which you then tell String to decode as if it were UTF-8. When it does that, it doesn't recognize the illegal 0xA3 sequence and replaces it with the substitution character.
To do this, you have to construct the string with the encoding it uses, then convert it to the encoding that you want. See How do I convert between ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 in Java?.

UTF-8 is easier than one thinks. In String everything is unicode characters.
Bytes/string conversion is done as follows.
(Note Cp1252 or Windows-1252 is the Windows Latin1 extension of ISO-8859-1; better use
that one.)
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), "Cp1252"));
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(
new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(file), "UTF-8"));
response.setContentType("text/html; charset=UTF-8");
response.setEncoding("UTF-8");
String s = "20 \u00A3"; // Escaping
To see why Cp1252 is more suitable than ISO-8859-1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

String s is a series of characters that are basically independent of any character encoding (ok, not exactly independent, but close enough for our needs now). Whatever encoding your data was in when you loaded it into a String has already been decoded. The decoding was done either using system default encoding (which is practically ALWAYS AN ERROR, do not ever use system default encoding, trust me I have over 10 years of experience in dealing with bugs related to wrong default encodings) or the encoding you explicitely specified when you loaded the data.
When you call getBytes("ISO-8859-1") for a String, you request that the String is encoded into bytes according to ISO-8859-1 encoding.
When you create a String from a byte array, you need to specify the encoding in which the characters in the byte array are represented. You create a string from a byte array that has been encoded in UTF-8 (and just above you encoded it in ISO-8859-1, that is your error).
What you want to do is:
byte bytes[] = s.getBytes("UTF-8");
s = new String(bytes, "UTF-8");