title: Problem with foreign letters in web application build with java
body: <p>So I have been building a simple application where a user can input some data into an html form on a webpage. However after that data is sent with polish special letters it is converted into HTML dec. code like for example <code>"&amp;#322;"</code> into my java backend code and not into the actual letters I would like to display. I have tried changin charsets encodings in many various ways however none of my solutions seems to work so after spending a few hours I decided to ask here. </p>
  
  <p>I've tried putting doing those things:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html lang="pl"&gt;
  &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"&gt;
  &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO 8859-16"&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>my backend looks like this </p>
  
  <pre><code>
  
  @Controller
  public class WelcomeController {
  
      private EpdFileSender sender;
  
      @Autowired
      public WelcomeController(EpdFileSender sender) {
          this.sender = sender;
      }
  
      @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
      public String showLoginPage() {
          return "welcome";
      }
  
      @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.POST)
      public String handleInputRequest(@RequestParam(name = "name") String name, @RequestParam String status1,
              @RequestParam String status2, @RequestParam String status3, ModelMap model) throws Exception {
  
          model.put("name", name);
          model.put("status1", status1);
          model.put("status2", status2);
          model.put("status3", status3);
  
  
  
          return "welcome";
      }
  }
  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My html looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!doctype html&gt;
  &lt;html lang="pl"&gt;
    &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO 8859-16"&gt;
      &lt;meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no"&gt;
      &lt;meta name="description" content=""&gt;
      &lt;meta name="author" content="Mark Otto, Jacob Thornton, and Bootstrap contributors"&gt;
      &lt;meta name="generator" content="Jekyll v3.8.5"&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Smart Door Card&lt;/title&gt;
  
  
    &lt;/head&gt;
  
  &lt;form action="/" method="POST" class="form-signin" autocomplete="off"&gt;
    &lt;i class="fas fa-pen-square fa-7x"&gt;&lt;/i&gt;
    &lt;h1 class="h3 mb-3 font-weight-normal logo-text"&gt;Smart Door Card&lt;/h1&gt;
  
    &lt;input type="text" name="name" class="form-control top" placeholder="Name" required autofocus&gt;
    &lt;input type="text" name="status1" class="form-control middle1" placeholder="Set Status"&gt;
    &lt;input type="text" name="status2" class="form-control middle2" placeholder="Set Status"&gt;
    &lt;input type="text" name="status3" class="form-control bottom" placeholder="Set Status"&gt;
  
    &lt;button class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block set-button" type="submit"&gt;Set Your Card&lt;/button&gt;
    &lt;p class="mt-5 mb-3 text-muted logo-footer"&gt;&amp;copy; The Smart Door Card&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I would like the polish special letters that are put by the user to display like letters in the app and not in code.</p>