UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xc7 in position 27: invalid continuation byte django

Question

I'm trying to upload my django project to Google Cloud Platform.

When I run

python manage.py runserver

an error occurs.

Until a while ago, it worked well.

After fixing codes of just one file 'setting.py' the error occurred.

Here's a screenshot image below.

C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\Scripts\python.exe C:/Users/sgc109/PycharmProjects/pyproj/my_project/manage.py runserver
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Users/sgc109/PycharmProjects/pyproj/my_project/manage.py", line 24, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 363, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 355, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\base.py", line 283, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\commands\runserver.py", line 62, in execute
    super(Command, self).execute(*args, **options)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\base.py", line 330, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\commands\runserver.py", line 101, in handle
    self.run(**options)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\commands\runserver.py", line 110, in run
    autoreload.main(self.inner_run, None, options)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 341, in main
    reloader(wrapped_main_func, args, kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 312, in python_reloader
    exit_code = restart_with_reloader()
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 294, in restart_with_reloader
    str_value = force_bytes(new_environ[key], encoding=encoding)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\encoding.py", line 124, in force_bytes
    return s.decode('utf-8', errors).encode(encoding, errors)
  File "C:\Users\sgc109\PycharmProjects\pyproj\djenv\lib\encodings\utf_8.py", line 16, in decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xc7 in position 27: invalid continuation byte

Process finished with exit code 1

I did my best to find the solution on Google and Stackoverflow, and

I tried hard for finding something wrong in my code, but I couldn't find anything.

Here's my directory structure, my main codes, and Project interpreter settings below. (Because I never changed other

codes in my project and the amount of codes are too many, I won't upload all the

codes in my django project.)

views.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from __future__ import unicode_literals

from django.shortcuts import render
from django.http import HttpResponse

# Create your views here.


def home(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world!")

urls.py

from django.conf.urls import url
from django.contrib import admin
from my_app import views
urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
    url(r'^$', views.home)
]

settings.py

import os

# Build paths inside the project like this: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ...)
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))


# Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/howto/deployment/checklist/

# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!
SECRET_KEY = 'secret key'

# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = True

ALLOWED_HOSTS = []


# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'my_app',
]

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

ROOT_URLCONF = 'my_project.urls'

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'my_project.wsgi.application'


# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/settings/#databases
if os.getenv('SERVER_SOFTWARE', '').startswith('Google App Engine'):
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
            'HOST': '/cloudsql/DB Project',
            'NAME': 'db-project-185409:asia-northeast1:sgc109',
            'USER': 'user',
            'PASSWORD': 'password',
        }
    }
else:
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
            'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
        }
    }

# Password validation
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/settings/#auth-password-validators

AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator',
    },
]


# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/topics/i18n/

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'

USE_I18N = True

USE_L10N = True

USE_TZ = True


# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATIC_ROOT = 'static'

manage.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys

if __name__ == "__main__":
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "my_project.settings")
    try:
        from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
    except ImportError:
        # The above import may fail for some other reason. Ensure that the
        # issue is really that Django is missing to avoid masking other
        # exceptions on Python 2.
        try:
            import django
        except ImportError:
            raise ImportError(
                "Couldn't import Django. Are you sure it's installed and "
                "available on your PYTHONPATH environment variable? Did you "
                "forget to activate a virtual environment?"
            )
        raise
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

The one thing I think I had a mistake is that

I did 'pip install' for installing Django and MySQL-python

not in virtual environment and did in virtual environment again.

But I'm not sure if it is affecting the error.

Thank you guys for reading my question.

Added

I debugged my code and I found that some directory name which has Korean word is having been passed to some function, but I have no idea why in the world the name of the directory is passed. I'm thinking that the directory which is passed has no relationship with the directory of my django project. Here are screenshots below.

Added2

I found that the directory is one of directories which is included in

environment variables. So I deleted that directory from environment variables

and rebooted my PC, then It worked!!

Answer 1

Was that C7 supposed to be Ç ? If so, you have latin1 bytes being treated as utf8. It does not work.

On the other hand, if you specify that you have latin1 bytes, mysql is happy to convert to utf8.

See "Best practice" in Trouble with UTF-8 characters; what I see is not what I stored and here are some random notes on python: http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/charcoll#python that go beyond the coding: clause. And search that article for "Django" for how to set the OPTIONS clause.