Convert url encoded string into python unicode string

Question

I have strings encoded in the following form: La+Cit%C3%A9+De+la+West that I stored in a SQLite VARCHAR field in python.

These are apparently UTF-8 encoded binary strings converted to urlencoded strings. The question is how to convert it back to a unicode string. s = 'La+Cit%C3%A9+De+la+West'

I used the urllib.unquote_plus( s ) python function but it doesn't convert the %C3%A9 into a unicode char. I see this 'La CitÃ© De la West' instead of the expected 'La Cité De la West'.

I'm running my code on Ubuntu, not windows and encoding is UTF-8.

chmike · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-23 09:10:37Z

6

As we discussed, it looks like the problem was that you were starting with a unicode object, not a string. You want a string:

>>> import urllib
>>> s1 = u'La+Cit%C3%A9+De+la+West'
>>> type(s1)
<type 'unicode'>
>>> print urllib.unquote_plus(s1)
La CitÃ© De la West

>>> s2 = str(s1)
>>> type(s2)
<type 'str'>
>>> print urllib.unquote_plus(s2)
La Cité De la West

>>> import sys
>>> sys.stdout.encoding
'UTF-8'

edited Sep 23, 2011 at 9:10

chmike

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answered Sep 22, 2011 at 17:53

Dave

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4 Comments

chmike Over a year ago

Your example works the same way for me. Is it the fact that the string is extracted from a SQLite database from a VARCHAR field ?

chmike Over a year ago

type(s) returns str with your example. With s = u"La+Cit%C3%A9+De+la+West", type(s) returns unicode and print unquote_plus(s) returns 'La CitÃ© De la West'. The problem is thus the initial type of s. using print unquote_plus(str(s)) solves my problem. !!

chmike Over a year ago

much better. I did a few edits to make it more clear and with the import statement for inexperienced programmers.

chmike Over a year ago

The problem was because SQLite returns CHAR arrays as unicode strings and not str strings. The use of str() prior to call the unquote_plus() solved my problem.

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