In python writing from XML to CSV, encoding error

Question

I am trying to convert an XML file to CSV, but the encoding of the XML ("ISO-8859-1") apparently contains characters that are not in the ascii codec which Python uses to write rows.

I get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "convert_folder_to_csv_PLAYER.py", line 139, in <module>
    xml2csv_PLAYER(filename)
  File "convert_folder_to_csv_PLAYER.py", line 121, in xml2csv_PLAYER
    fout.writerow(row)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe1' in position 4: ordinal not in range(128)

I have tried opening the file as follows: dom1 = parse(input_filename.encode( "utf-8" ) )

and I have tried replacing the \xe1 character in each row before it is written. Any suggestions?

farmdev.com/talks/unicode

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

2011-01-17 21:41:23 +00:00
Commented Jan 17, 2011 at 21:41 — Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, Commented Jan 17, 2011 at 21:41

nosklo · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-17 21:51:47Z

1

The xml parser returns unicode objects. That's a good thing. Thing is, csv module can't deal with them.

You could encode each unicode string returned by the xml parser before handing to the csv writer, but a better idea is to use this csv UnicodeWriter recipe from the official docs of the csv module:

import csv, codecs, cStringIO

class UnicodeWriter:
    """
    A CSV writer which will write rows to CSV file "f",
    which is encoded in the given encoding.
    """

    def __init__(self, f, dialect=csv.excel, encoding="utf-8", **kwds):
        # Redirect output to a queue
        self.queue = cStringIO.StringIO()
        self.writer = csv.writer(self.queue, dialect=dialect, **kwds)
        self.stream = f
        self.encoder = codecs.getincrementalencoder(encoding)()

    def writerow(self, row):
        self.writer.writerow([s.encode("utf-8") for s in row])
        # Fetch UTF-8 output from the queue ...
        data = self.queue.getvalue()
        data = data.decode("utf-8")
        # ... and reencode it into the target encoding
        data = self.encoder.encode(data)
        # write to the target stream
        self.stream.write(data)
        # empty queue
        self.queue.truncate(0)

    def writerows(self, rows):
        for row in rows:
            self.writerow(row)

edited Jan 17, 2011 at 21:51

answered Jan 17, 2011 at 21:42

nosklo

224k58 gold badges300 silver badges299 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

user574435 Over a year ago

Thank you for your answer -- I struggled with the UnicodeWriter class because I am new to Python and had some trouble with the stream, but I followed your first suggestion and fixed my problem with one line of code: [code]fout.writerow([s.encode("utf-8") for s in row])[/code]

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

In python writing from XML to CSV, encoding error

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related