UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 1-4: ordinal not in range(128)

Question

I see tons of questions that are related to this but I can't figure out the solution.

This is on Django 1.4 and Python 2.7.

data is a dictionary that contains UTF8 characters. See this line:

render_to_response('application/app.html', data, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Template gets rendered that outputs values from that data.

Why does it explode and what can I do to fix this?

EDIT: After digging around, part of that data contains lxml.objectify.ObjectifiedElement. Basically a XML element that can be queried like a normal dictionary. Values that it produces appear to be proper unicode strings like this: u'\xae\u2020\xa5\xa8\u02c6\xf8'

Here's the full stacktrace:

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response
  response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)

File "/web/mysite/current/api/views.py", line 163, in invoice
  return render_to_response('application/app.html', data, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/shortcuts/__init__.py", line 20, in render_to_response
  return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs), **httpresponse_kwargs)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 176, in render_to_string
  return t.render(context_instance)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 140, in render
  return self._render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 134, in _render
  return self.nodelist.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 823, in render
  bit = self.render_node(node, context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 837, in render_node
  return node.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py", line 123, in render
  return compiled_parent._render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 134, in _render
  return self.nodelist.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 823, in render
  bit = self.render_node(node, context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 837, in render_node
  return node.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py", line 62, in render
  result = block.nodelist.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 823, in render
  bit = self.render_node(node, context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 837, in render_node
  return node.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 281, in render
  return nodelist.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 823, in render
  bit = self.render_node(node, context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 837, in render_node
  return node.render(context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 880, in render
  return _render_value_in_context(output, context)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 858, in _render_value_in_context
  value = force_unicode(value)

File "/web/mysite/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/encoding.py", line 74, in force_unicode
  s = unicode(str(s), encoding, errors)

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 1-4: ordinal not in range(128)

Answer 1

It should not contain UTF-8 characters; it should contain unicodes.

{'foo': u'bar'}