Python - 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 5: ordinal not in range(128)

Question

I'm trying to run a quick Django application that pulls data from Google AdWords and exposes the names of accounts that are managed by an agency. When doing so, I get the following error:

UnicodeEncodeError at /account-hierarchy/
'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 5: ordinal not in range(128)

Here's the snippet:

<table class="pretty-table">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <td>Customer ID</td>
      <td>Client Name</td>
      <td>Can Manage Clients</td>
      <td>Account Currency</td>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  {% for account in managed_accounts %}
    <tr>
      {% for field in account %}
        <td>{{ field }}</td>
      {% endfor %}
    </tr>
  {% endfor %}
</table>

where the call to {{ field }} is the problematic line.

I have already added

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

to the template I am rendering, but it still fails, so I believe the problem is not on the HTML template, but rather on the Python/Django engine.

Any ideas how I can fix it?

Here's the View code that renders the template:

def account_hierarchy(request):
manager_ids = settings.MANAGER_IDS
managed_accounts = []
for manager_id in manager_ids:
    managed_accounts.extend(adwords_utils.getManagedAccounts(manager_id))
return render_to_response('simple-table.html', {"managed_accounts": managed_accounts})

UPDATED Question

• Python Version: 2.7.6
• Models.py is currently empty

What's also curious is that if I remove this:

{% for field in account %}
    <td>{{ field }}</td>
  {% endfor %}

and I just print out the main array:

{{ managed_accounts }}

it works just fine. Not sure what's going on.

Curious fact #2: As I managed to output the full array, I checked for character 'é' and I didn't find it on the final output. Not sure where it was coming from.

Answer 1

The problem is likely that, in some place in your code, you accidentally defined a data structure to be a Python byte string, when you should have made it a Python Unicode string. This leads Django and Python to convert from Django's Unicode string to your byte string, in a default way, using the ASCII codec.

The error message gives some clues:

• The error is perhaps occurring when you call account_hierarchy()
• The phrase character u'\\xe9' in position 5: ordinal not in range(128) means that Python is trying to convert Unicode character 'é' (U+00E9) into an ASCII value from 0..127. Look in your data for an 'é'. Which field is it in?
• The phrase 'ascii' codec means the conversion is likely inadvertent. If you intend to use UTF-8, you wouldn't have called the ASCII codec intentionally. But when you cause a conversion but don't specify a codec, Python uses ASCII.
• The word encode means conversion from Unicode to byte-oriented encoding. You have read Python's Unicode HOWTO article a couple of times, haven't you?

Function render_to_response() uses settings DEFAULT_CHARSET and DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE]( https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#std:setting-DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE ). They should default to 'utf-8' and 'text/html', which should be appropriate for generating a UTF-8 encoded HTML page, but check.

I like the suggestion that you check your models.py to be sure that your models are defined in terms of Unicode data types, not byte string data types. Update : you say models.py is empty, so that won't be much help.

Character handling, and Unicode vs byte strings, are handled differently in Python 2 and Python 3. Which version of Python are you using? Update : Python 2.7.6, thanks. The Unicode HOWTO I linked to above is for Python 2.7.x.

If you make sure your code handles strings as Unicode throughout, unless you really want a byte string, that will likely fix this problem.

Update : Consider modifying your template to give you debugging information. Try something like these expressions, to see what's really in managed_accounts :

</thead>
<tr><td>managed_accounts is: {{ repr(managed_accounts) }}</tr></td>
{% for account in managed_accounts %}
  <tr>
  {% for field in account %}
    <td>{{ type(field) }}, {{ repr(field) }}</td>
  {% endfor %}
  </tr>
{% endfor %}

[ Updated in response to multiple updates from original poster.]

Answer 2

your problem is same with mine,just encode question, you can add bellow code in your views.py of django project:

 1. #coding=utf-8  
 2. import sys
 3. reload(sys)
 4. sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')

my problem: Error during template rendering In template D:\\PythonProjects\\DjangoProject\\guest\\sign\\templates\\sign\\guest_manage.html, error at line 72 enter image description here

Answer 3

这是属于 jinja2 模板的问题，将通过将编码设置为 utf-8 作为默认编码来解决。

sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')