How to convert a string to utf-8 in Python

In Python 2

>>> plain_string = "Hi!"
>>> unicode_string = u"Hi!"
>>> type(plain_string), type(unicode_string)
(<type 'str'>, <type 'unicode'>)

^ This is the difference between a byte string (plain_string) and a unicode string.

>>> s = "Hello!"
>>> u = unicode(s, "utf-8")

^ Converting to unicode and specifying the encoding.

In Python 3

All strings are unicode. The unicode function does not exist anymore. See answer from @Noumenon

If the methods above don't work, you can also tell Python to ignore portions of a string that it can't convert to utf-8:

stringnamehere.decode('utf-8', 'ignore')

Might be a bit overkill, but when I work with ascii and unicode in same files, repeating decode can be a pain, this is what I use:

def make_unicode(inp):
    if type(inp) != unicode:
        inp =  inp.decode('utf-8')
    return inp

Adding the following line to the top of your .py file:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

allows you to encode strings directly in your script, like this:

utfstr = "ボールト"

If I understand you correctly, you have a utf-8 encoded byte-string in your code.

Converting a byte-string to a unicode string is known as decoding (unicode -> byte-string is encoding).

You do that by using the unicode function or the decode method. Either:

unicodestr = unicode(bytestr, encoding)
unicodestr = unicode(bytestr, "utf-8")

Or:

unicodestr = bytestr.decode(encoding)
unicodestr = bytestr.decode("utf-8")

city = 'Ribeir\xc3\xa3o Preto'
print city.decode('cp1252').encode('utf-8')

In Python 3.6, they do not have a built-in unicode() method. Strings are already stored as unicode by default and no conversion is required. Example:

my_str = "\u221a25"
print(my_str)
>>> √25

Translate with ord() and unichar(). Every unicode char have a number asociated, something like an index. So Python have a few methods to translate between a char and his number. Downside is a ñ example. Hope it can help.

>>> C = 'ñ'
>>> U = C.decode('utf8')
>>> U
u'\xf1'
>>> ord(U)
241
>>> unichr(241)
u'\xf1'
>>> print unichr(241).encode('utf8')
ñ

First, str in Python is represented in Unicode.

Second, UTF-8 is an encoding standard to encode Unicode string to bytes. There are many encoding standards out there (e.g. UTF-16, ASCII, SHIFT-JIS, etc.).

When the client sends data to your server and they are using UTF-8, they are sending a bunch of bytes not str.

You received a str because the "library" or "framework" that you are using, has implicitly converted some random bytes to str.

Under the hood, there is just a bunch of bytes. You just need ask the "library" to give you the request content in bytes and you will handle the decoding yourself (if library can't give you then it is trying to do black magic then you shouldn't use it).

Decode UTF-8 encoded bytes to str: bs.decode('utf-8')

Encode str to UTF-8 bytes: s.encode('utf-8')

you can also do this:

from unidecode import unidecode
unidecode(yourStringtoDecode)

You can use python's standard library codecs module.

import codecs
codecs.decode(b'Decode me', 'utf-8')

Yes, You can add

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

in your source code's first line.

You can read more details here https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/