How to make “transaction data” come through as ASCII text?

Question

When transfering ETH using Parity, I have the ability to add "transaction data". Two questions:

1 - Where can I read this on a blockchain explorer (or with the web3 console)

2 - How can I make sure that this is read as ASCII text?

Answer 1

Where can I read this on a blockchain explorer (or with the web3 console)

The transaction data can be seen in the 'input data' field of Etherscan:

How can I make sure that this is read as ASCII text?

Ethereum will require that this is encoded as hexadecimal, however, after pressing the "Convert to Ascii" button, it will look like this (thanks @tayvano for pointing this out in your answer):

It's not the neatest solution, and I'm not sure whether it will be possible to make this perfect without some wizardry of your own - such as creating a Chrome plugin that automatically translates the Etherscan's 'input data' field without the garbled characters at the beginning of your message or to otherwise create your own UI to decode the input data more neatly.

---

One solution (to the goal that you have, based on your earlier question), although not as elegant as I'm sure that you are looking for is the following:

Step 1: create and deploy a smart contract similar to the following:

pragma solidity ^0.4.18;

contract Propose
{
    string public message;

    function propose(string _message) public {
        message = _message;
    }
}

Step 2: call the function with your, string, message to record your message on the Ethereum blockchain forever.

Step 3: Impress - decoding the hexadecimal input both seen in the transaction now stored in the deployed contract's storage - recorded on the Ethereum blockchain forever e.g.

3c696e7365727420616d617a696e6720706572736f6e2773206e616d653e2c2057696c6c20796f75206d61727279206d653f

Decodes to the following:

<insert amazing person's name>, Will you marry me?

Step 4: live happily ever after!

Answer 2

1. On etherscan.io

2. You can't make sure that it's read as ASCII, but you can make it readable in ASCII. Take your string and convert to hex using something like http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/ascii-to-hex.htm. Remove the spaces, add 0x to the beginning, include as data. Then on Etherscan, if you click the "ASCII" button on the TX, you and anyone else who clicks that button should be able to read you message