Delete every non utf-8 symbols from string

Question

I have a big amount of files and parser. What I Have to do is strip all non utf-8 symbols and put data in mongodb. Currently I have code like this.

with open(fname, "r") as fp:
    for line in fp:
        line = line.strip()
        line = line.decode('utf-8', 'ignore')
        line = line.encode('utf-8', 'ignore')

somehow I still get an error

bson.errors.InvalidStringData: strings in documents must be valid UTF-8: 
1/b62010montecassianomcir\xe2\x86\x90ta0\xe2\x86\x90008923304320733/290066010401040101506055soccorin

I don't get it. Is there some simple way to do it?

UPD: seems like Python and Mongo don't agree about definition of Utf-8 Valid string.

Erosion

In my head algrithm of parsing is not very important end point is in first few lines. Maybe I'm mistaken – Erosion

Answer 1

Try below code line instead of last two lines. Hope it helps:

line=line.decode('utf-8','ignore').encode("utf-8")

Sectary

I have some invisible chars which are appearing only after insertion. any fix for this? – Retinite

@Retinite can you give an example – Sectary

this line.decode('utf-8','ignore').encode("utf-8") produce this error AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode', i work with python3 – Benumb

@ChediBechikh Here is how you do it in python3 bytes(line, 'utf-8').decode('utf-8','ignore') – Sectary

this does not change anything, the error exist when printing so i write this code print(ligne.rstrip().encode('utf-8','ignore')) but the problem with encode is , it add a b caracter like b'press' – Benumb

This doesn't seem to work. I get lots of special chars: \00\00\00\00\00 – Rabassa

It looks like the only difference between the code in the question and the answer is that encode() no longer has ignore. Why would this make a difference? The default is strict which would raise an exception rather than skip the invalid utf8? – Angkor

Answer 2

For python 3, as mentioned in a comment in this thread, you can do:

line = bytes(line, 'utf-8').decode('utf-8', 'ignore')

The 'ignore' parameter prevents an error from being raised if any characters are unable to be decoded.

If your line is already a bytes object (e.g. b'my string') then you just need to decode it with decode('utf-8', 'ignore').

Sloe

But if line is already ` str` in py3, is it allowed to be non-utf8? – Abortive

Answer 3

Example to handle no utf-8 characters

import string

test=u"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHi <<First Name>>\nthis is filler text \xa325 more filler.\nadditilnal filler.\n\nyet more\xa0still more\xa0filler.\n\n\xa0\n\n\n\n\nmore\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nfiller.\x03\n\t\t\t\t\t\t    almost there \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nthe end\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"

print ''.join(x for x in test if x in string.printable)

Slop

this removes all non-ascii characters, which includes many, many valid UTF-8 characters – Leitao

Answer 4

with open(fname, "r") as fp:
for line in fp:
    line = line.strip()
    line = line.decode('cp1252').encode('utf-8')

Xantha

This will be horribly wrong if the original input encoding is not in fact code page 1252. You remove the error, but produce garbage. The error is there for a reason, to prevent you from producing garbage. – Robbirobbia

Answer 5

I would just encode in ascii.

line = line.encode('ascii', 'ignore')

Fairfield