TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported

Question

New to python....Trying to get the parser to decode properly into a sqlite database but it just won't work :(

# coding: utf8
from pysqlite2 import dbapi2 as sqlite3
import urllib2
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from string import *


conn = sqlite3.connect(':memory:')
cursor = conn.cursor()

# # create a table
def createTable():
    cursor.execute("""CREATE TABLE characters
                      (rank INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, word TEXT, definition TEXT) 
                   """)


def insertChar(rank,word,definition):
    cursor.execute("""INSERT INTO characters (rank,word,definition)
                        VALUES (?,?,?)""",(rank,word,definition))


def main():
    createTable()

    # u = unicode("辣", "utf-8")

    # insertChar(1,u,"123123123")

    soup = BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen('http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html').read())
    # print (html_doc.prettify())   

    tables = soup.blockquote.table

    # print tables

    rows = tables.find_all('tr')
    result=[]
    for tr in rows:
        cols = tr.find_all('td')
        character = []
        x = cols[0].string 
        y = cols[1].string 
        z = cols[2].string 
        xx = unicode(x, "utf-8")
        yy = unicode(y , "utf-8")
        zz = unicode(z , "utf-8")
        insertChar(xx,yy,zz)

    conn.commit() 

main()

I keep getting the follow error: TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported

WARNING:root:Some characters could not be decoded, and were replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sqlitetestbed.py", line 64, in <module>
    main()
  File "sqlitetestbed.py", line 48, in main
    xx = unicode(x, "utf-8")


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "sqlitetestbed.py", line 52, in <module>
main()
File "sqlitetestbed.py", line 48, in main
insertChar(x,y,z)
File "sqlitetestbed.py", line 20, in insertChar
VALUES (?,?,?)""",(rank,word,definition))
pysqlite2.dbapi2.IntegrityError: datatype mismatch

I'm probably doing something thats really stupid... :( Please tell me what I'm doing wrong... Thanks!

Answer 1

x is already unicode, as the cols[0].string field contains unicode (just as documented).