# ES5.2 RestClient: Content type?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 11, 2017, 4:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741 "2017-02-11T04:58:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@trisport88](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/trisport88)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2017, 4:58am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741/1 "2017-02-11T04:58:01Z")
Hi,
So I have been debugging the following server side exception while indexing:
> Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException: Invalid UTF-8 middle byte 0x3f
> at [Source: org.elasticsearch.common.bytes.BytesReference$MarkSupportingStreamInputWrapper@323865da; line: 1, column: 873]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser.\_constructError(JsonParser.java:1702) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.base.ParserMinimalBase.\_reportError(ParserMinimalBase.java:558) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.\_reportInvalidOther(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:3548) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.\_reportInvalidOther(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:3555) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.\_decodeUtf8\_2(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:3329) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.\_finishString2(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:2513) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.\_finishAndReturnString(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:2465) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at com.fasterxml.jackson.core.json.UTF8StreamJsonParser.getText(UTF8StreamJsonParser.java:315) ~[jackson-core-2.8.1.jar:2.8.1]
> at org.elasticsearch.common.xcontent.json.JsonXContentParser.text(JsonXContentParser.java:83) ~[elasticsearch-5.0.1.jar:5.0.1]
> at org.elasticsearch.common.xcontent.support.AbstractXContentParser.textOrNull(AbstractXContentParser.java:199) ~[elasticsearch-5.0.1.jar:5.0.1]
> at org.elasticsearch.index.mapper.TextFieldMapper.parseCreateField(TextFieldMapper.java:379) ~[elasticsearch-5.0.1.jar:5.0.1]
> at org.elasticsearch.index.mapper.FieldMapper.parse(FieldMapper.java:286) ~[elasticsearch-5.0.1.jar:5.0.1]
> ... 39 more
I have looked at a few other posts with the obvious response of...you should not be sending invalid UTF-8 characters. The trouble is I am not sure how I am getting these invalid UTF-8 characters. The DB character set is UTF-8 and I am reading and sending a field from the database.
It may be that there invalid UTF-8 characters (I'm still debugging) but I was wondering if the ES5.2 RestClient should be setting content type. I'm not sure exactly if the content type header is automatically set when I call RestClient\>\>performRequest.
So my question is when using the RestClient should the content type header always be set when sending requests to the server? e.g.
> new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT\_TYPE, "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
I have set it and it does not seem to do any harm but it has not helped my encoding problem either. Anyway should it be set?
Cheers,
Stuart
---
### Author:  [@trisport88](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/trisport88)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741/2 "2017-02-14T16:15:32Z")
Does ElasticSearch assume a certain character set for index and search requests? I read that it assumes JSON content but I cannot find any information about character set.
As far as I can tell the text I am reading from the database is valid UTF8 so something is happening on the sending (RestClient) or receiving side (ElasticSearch).
---
### Author:  [@trisport88](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/trisport88)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2017, 6:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741/3 "2017-02-14T18:19:13Z")
Ok, so I have solved this as follows (for RestClient):
```
ContentType ct = ContentType.APPLICATION_JSON.withCharset(Charset.forName("UTF-8"))
HttpEntity requestBody = new StringEntity(jsonMapping, ct);
```
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2017, 6:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/es5-2-restclient-content-type/74741/4 "2017-03-14T18:19:35Z")
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