---
title: Certain properties are changing to support a full UTF-8 character set - Shopify developer changelog
description: Shopify’s developer changelog documents all changes to Shopify’s platform. Find the latest news and learn about new platform opportunities.
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  html: https://shopify.dev/changelog/certain-properties-are-changing-to-support-a-full-utf-8-character-set
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---

[Back to Developer changelog](https://shopify.dev/changelog)

July 24, 2017

Tags:

* API

# Certain properties are changing to support a full UTF-8 character set

Starting on Monday, July 24th, there will be some changes to how certain properties such as tags and handles are encoded. Currently, Shopify only supports ASCII characters for these properties. Going forward, Shopify will support a full UTF-8 character set for these properties, and you can expect the values of these properties to contain non-ASCII characters.

***

For example, currently a product with the title 日本 will have a handle autotmatically generated as "" (an empty string), as there are no ASCII characters in the title. Going forward, the handle would now be generated as 日本 and the product page would be found at the URL `https://johns-apparel.myshopify.com/products/日本`.

Here's an example JSON representation of a product with a non-ASCII handle:

```
{
	"product": {
		"id": 11125239118,
		"title": "日本",
		"body_html": "こんにちは!",
		"vendor": "Jamie D's Emporium",
		"product_type": "",
		"created_at": "2017-07-11T17:34:29-04:00",
		"handle": "日本",
		"updated_at": "2017-07-11T17:35:09-04:00",
		"published_at": "2017-07-11T17:33:50-04:00",
		"template_suffix": "",
		"published_scope": "global",
		"tags": "",
		"variants": [{
			"id": 43945333838,
			"product_id": 11125239118,
			"title": "Default Title",
			"price": "19.99",
			"sku": "",
			"position": 1,
			"grams": 0,
			"inventory_policy": "deny",
			"compare_at_price": null,
			"fulfillment_service": "manual",
			"inventory_management": null,
			"option1": "Default Title",
			"option2": null,
			"option3": null,
			"created_at": "2017-07-11T17:34:29-04:00",
			"updated_at": "2017-07-11T17:34:29-04:00",
			"taxable": true,
			"barcode": "",
			"image_id": null,
			"inventory_quantity": 1,
			"weight": 0,
			"weight_unit": "kg",
			"old_inventory_quantity": 1,
			"requires_shipping": true
		}],
		"options": [{
			"id": 13627415438,
			"product_id": 11125239118,
			"name": "Title",
			"position": 1,
			"values": [
				"Default Title"
			]
		}],
		"images": [],
		"image": null
	}
}
```

Your application must be prepared to parse any non-ASCII characters present in the data returned by Shopify. For maximum robustness, your application should be prepared to handle any string value from Shopify that might contain non-ASCII characters. It is likely that in the future, more parameters will support a full set of UTF-8 characters.

If your application relies on Javascript to parse the URL, for example on a product page, you will also need to prepare to handle any non-ASCII characters present here as well.

Keep in mind that this option won't necessarily be available to all merchants immediately on July 24th – this notice is simply to prepare platform developers to handle these changes.