python encoding/decoding problem

Question

I'm trying to use python's Template object to create html emails. However, when the app tries to send the emails I get the error:

File "/base/data/home/apps/hanksandbox/1.350486862928605153/main.py", line 573, in post
html = messages.email_document_html(document)
File "/base/data/home/apps/hanksandbox/1.350486862928605153/messages.py", line 109, in email_document_html
description = document.get_description()
File "/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/string.py", line 170, in substitute
return self.pattern.sub(convert, self.template)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 763: ordinal not in range(128)

The code the error refers to looks like:

def email_document_html(document):
email_document = Template("""
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
    ${stylesheet}
</head>
<html>
<body>
<h1 id="mainhead">Essays</h1>
<div class="document">
<span class="info">At ${date} ${author} published:</span><br/><hr/>
<a href="${domain}/${author}/document/${filename}/" target="_blank"><h1 class="title">${title}</h1></a>
<p class="description">${description}</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
""")
return email_document.substitute(
                                 stylesheet=style,
                                 date=str(document.date),
                                 author=document.author.username,
                                 domain=domainstring,
                                 filename=document.filename,
                                 title=document.title,
                                 description = document.get_description()
                                 )

My IDE is using UTF-8 as its character set. I've tried adding # coding: utf-8 to my files. I've tried adding .encode("utf-8") or .decode("utf-8") in a variety of places particularly after 'document.get_description()'. But I'm grasping at straws.

Any suggestions?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-17 22:51:58Z

6

Use unicode everywhere.

email_document = Template(u"""
 ...

"Unicode In Python, Completely Demystified"

answered May 17, 2011 at 22:51

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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Comments

Paul McMillan · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-17 22:53:24Z

2

Put a u before your template string to specify that it is intended to be a unicode string. Python < 3 interprets strings like that as ASCII unless told otherwise.

email_document = Template(u"""
...

answered May 17, 2011 at 22:53

Paul McMillan

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1 Comment

Hank Over a year ago

Thanks! I can't believe I melted my brain for hours over one little letter u.

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