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After upgrading to NodeBB 4.6, Chinese filenames show as garbled text in the admin panel, while displaying correctly on the frontend.

​Issue:​​ Upload Chinese-named files → frontend shows correctly Admin panel displays random characters instead of Chinese text Works fine in NodeBB 4.2, broken after 4.6 upgrade

This appears to be a regression in filename encoding handling specific to the admin interface. The actual files work properly - only the display is affected.

Environment: Ubuntu, C.UTF-8 locale, MongoDB. Requesting investigation into this encoding issue that affects Chinese content management in the admin panel.

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[-] lwsh6688@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

The backend should display it as 1761314038073-截图.png

[-] lwsh6688@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

截图.png
For example, the Chinese name of this image also appears garbled in the backend, but it displays correctly on the front end.

[-] baris@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

Can you provide a sample text file? Maybe upload one to this post.

[-] baris@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

Yeah looks like it started with the change from connect-multiparty to multer in https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/commit/385f4f12be4dbd41832bebbe043288ee524a1bee, will take a look. Thanks for reporting.

[-] lwsh6688@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

Files with Chinese names display garbled characters when uploaded.

[-] baris@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

![截图.png](https://community.nodebb.org/assets/uploads/files/1761314038073-%C3%A6-%C2%AA%C3%A5.png) on this it looks like this and on the backend it looks like below. Not sure if it's supposed to be different.

image.png

[-] baris@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

And it was working that way in 4.2.0? I will see if I can find the commit that changed that.

[-] lwsh6688@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

NodeBB version 4.4 could display the names correctly, but after upgrading to version 4.6, the names of newly uploaded files became garbled.

[-] baris@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago
[-] lwsh6688@community.nodebb.org 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you. I will upgrade promptly when the next version is released.

[-] codexa@community.nodebb.org 1 points 6 months ago

hey, it’s a small bug from the new upload handler. just update to latest build or apply the recent fix and it will show chinese names fine again.

[-] jonathanrdd@community.nodebb.org 1 points 6 months ago

LWSH6688 It’s likely a UI side regression rather than a storage issue, since the frontend still renders the filenames correctly. Check that the admin page is actually being served with UTF 8 headers, then compare the output with the filename shown in the database to confirm it is only a display layer problem. If everything matches, open a GitHub issue with your environment info, because this looks like something the core team will need to patch in the 4.6 admin interface.

this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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