unicode - Decode UTF-8 with Javascript

Question

I have Javascript in an XHTML web page that is passing UTF-8 encoded strings. It needs to continue to pass the UTF-8 version, as well as decode it. How is it possible to decode a UTF-8 string for display?

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
function updateUser(usernameSent){
    var usernameReceived = usernameSent; // Current value: Gr????????e
    var usernameDecoded = usernameReceived;  // Decode to: Gr??e
    var html2id = '';
    html2id += 'Encoded: ' + usernameReceived + '<br />Decoded: ' + usernameDecoded;
    document.getElementById('userId').innerHTML = html2id;
}
// ]]>
</script>

Answer 1

To answer the original question: here is how you decode utf-8 in javascript:

http://ecmanaut.blogspot.ca/2006/07/encoding-decoding-utf8-in-javascript.html

Specifically,

function encode_utf8(s) {
  return unescape(encodeURIComponent(s));
}

function decode_utf8(s) {
  return decodeURIComponent(escape(s));
}

We have been using this in our production code for 6 years, and it has worked flawlessly.

Note, however, that escape() and unescape() are deprecated. See this.