UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 3-6: invalid data

Question

how does the unicode thing works on python2? i just dont get it.

here i download data from a server and parse it for JSON.

Traceback (most recent cal         


        

Answer 1

The string you're trying to parse as a JSON is not encoded in UTF-8. Most likely it is encoded in ISO-8859-1. Try the following:

json.loads(unicode(opener.open(...), "ISO-8859-1"))

That will handle any umlauts that might get in the JSON message.

You should read Joel Spolsky's The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!). I hope that it will clarify some issues you're having around Unicode.