Convert every dictionary value to utf-8 (dictionary comprehension?)

Question

I have a dictionary and I want to convert every value to utf-8. This works, but is there a \"more pythonic\" way?

            for key in row.keys():
                


        

Answer 1

Use a dictionary comprehension. It looks like you're starting with a dictionary so:

 mydict = {k: unicode(v).encode("utf-8") for k,v in mydict.iteritems()}

The example for dictionary comprehensions is near the end of the block in the link.

Answer 2

You can just iterate through the keys if you wanted to:

{x:unicode(a[x]).encode("utf-8") for x in a.keys()}

Answer 3

It depends why you're implicitly encoding to UTF-8. If it's because you're writing to a file, the pythonic way is to leave your strings as Unicode and encode on output:

with io.open("myfile.txt", "w", encoding="UTF-8") as my_file:
    for (key, values) in row.items():
        my_string = u"{key}: {value}".format(key=key, value=value)
        my_file.write(my_string)

Answer 4

Best approach to convert non-ascii dictionary value in ascii characters is

mydict = {k: unicode(v, errors='ignore').encode('ascii','ignore') for k,v in mydict.iteritems()} 

Best approach to convert non-utf-8 dictionary value in utf-8 characters is

mydict = {k: unicode(v, errors='ignore').encode('utf-8','ignore') for k,v in mydict.iteritems()}

For more reference read python unicode documentation

Answer 5

Python 3 version building on that one answer by That1Guy.

{k: str(v).encode("utf-8") for k,v in mydict.items()}

Answer 6

As I had this problem as well, I built a very simple function that allows any dict to be decoded in utf-8 (The problem with the current answer is that it applies only for simple dict).

If it can help anyone, it is great, here is the function :

def utfy_dict(dic):
    if isinstance(dic,unicode):
        return(dic.encode("utf-8"))
    elif isinstance(dic,dict):
        for key in dic:
            dic[key] = utfy_dict(dic[key])
        return(dic)
    elif isinstance(dic,list):
        new_l = []
        for e in dic:
            new_l.append(utfy_dict(e))
        return(new_l)
    else:
        return(dic)