Python: Creating a Unicode string

Question

I have a problem in Python with Unicode. I need plot a graph with Unicode annotations in it. According to the tutorial I should just create my string in Unicode. I do it like this:

annotation = u"%s has %s rev"%(art.title, len(art.revisions))

It is art.title that has Unicode characters in it. Sometimes that code works, sometimes it gives me the error below:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 19: ordinal not in range(128)

How can I fix it?

EDIT: I have error exactly after "annotation" line:

  File "script.py", line 195, in test_trie
annotation = u"%s has %s rev"%(art.title, len(art.revisions))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 19: ordinal not in range(128)

Answer 1

You have two options: Either use art.title.decode('utf_8'), or create a new Unicode string with UTF-8 encoding by unicode(art.title, 'utf_8').

Answer 2

I think it depends if your title has a unicode characters or not.

I would try adding art.title.encode("utf-8") or art.title.decode("utf-8") and see how it works