Django encoding error when reading from a CSV - django

Question

When I try to run:
import csv
with open('data.csv', 'rU') as csvfile:
reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
for row in reader:
pgd = Player.objects.get_or_create(
player_name=row['Player'],
team=row['Team'],
position=row['Position']
)
Most of my data gets created in the database, except for one particular row. When my script reaches the row, I receive the error:
ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a
text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str).
It is highly recommended that you instead just switch your application to Unicode strings.`
The particular row in the CSV that causes this error is:
>>> row
{'FR\xed\x8aD\xed\x8aRIC.ST-DENIS', 'BOS', 'G'}
I've looked at the other similar Stackoverflow threads with the same or similar issues, but most aren't specific to using Sqlite with Django. Any advice?
If it matters, I'm running the script by going into the Django shell by calling python manage.py shell, and copy-pasting it in, as opposed to just calling the script from the command line.
This is the stacktrace I get:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<console>", line 4, in <module>
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/csv.py", line 108, in next
row = self.reader.next()
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/codecs.py", line 302, in decode
(result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xcc in position 1674: invalid continuation byte
EDIT: I decided to just manually import this entry into my database, rather than try to read it from my CSV, based on Alastair McCormack's feedback
Based on the output from your question, it looks like the person who made the CSV mojibaked it - it doesn't seem to represent FRÉDÉRIC.ST-DENIS. You can try using windows-1252 instead of utf-8 but I think you'll end up with FRíŠDíŠRIC.ST-DENIS in your database.

Answer 1

I suspect you're using Python 2 - open() returns str which are simply byte strings.
The error is telling you that you need to decode your text to Unicode string before use.
The simplest method is to decode each cell:
with open('data.csv', 'r') as csvfile: # 'U' means Universal line mode and is not necessary
reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
for row in reader:
pgd = Player.objects.get_or_create(
player_name=row['Player'].decode('utf-8),
team=row['Team'].decode('utf-8),
position=row['Position'].decode('utf-8)
)
That'll work but it's ugly add decodes everywhere and it won't work in Python 3. Python 3 improves things by opening files in text mode and returning Python 3 strings which are the equivalent of Unicode strings in Py2.
To get the same functionality in Python 2, use the io module. This gives you a open() method which has an encoding option. Annoyingly, the Python 2.x CSV module is broken with Unicode, so you need to install a backported version:
pip install backports.csv
To tidy your code and future proof it, do:
import io
from backports import csv
with io.open('data.csv', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as csvfile:
reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
for row in reader:
# now every row is automatically decoded from UTF-8
pgd = Player.objects.get_or_create(
player_name=row['Player'],
team=row['Team'],
position=row['Position']
)

Answer 2

Encode Player name in utf-8 using .encode('utf-8') in player name
import csv
with open('data.csv', 'rU') as csvfile:
reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
for row in reader:
pgd = Player.objects.get_or_create(
player_name=row['Player'].encode('utf-8'),
team=row['Team'],
position=row['Position']
)

Answer 3

In Django, decode with latin-1, csv.DictReader(io.StringIO(csv_file.read().decode('latin-1'))), it would devour all special characters and all comma exceptions you get in utf-8.