encoding error : input conversion failed due to input error, bytes 0x9D 0x29 0x2E 0x20 when using Flask and BeautifulSoup

Question

I am making a Web Scraper for scraping GSoC organisation information. I am trying to display the output on the browser by using Flask. But I am getting this error:

(venv) astanwar99@astanwar99-Predator-G3-572:~/DEVSPACE/WebDev/Web_Scrap_GSOC/GSoC-OrganisationScraper$ python scrape.py
* Serving Flask app "scrape" (lazy loading)
* Environment: production
WARNING: Do not use the development server in a production 
environment.
Use a production WSGI server instead.
* Debug mode: on
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
* Restarting with stat
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger PIN: 684-363-716
127.0.0.1 - - [22/Mar/2019 12:26:08] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
scrape.py:43: UserWarning: No parser was explicitly specified, so I'm 
using the best available HTML parser for this system ("lxml"). This 
usually isn't a problem, but if you run this code on another system, 
or in a different virtual environment, it may use a different parser 
and behave differently.

The code that caused this warning is on line 43 of the file scrape.py. To get rid of this warning, pass the additional argument  
'features="lxml"' to the BeautifulSoup constructor.

soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
encoding error : input conversion failed due to input error, bytes 0x9D 0x29 0x2E 0x20
encoding error : input conversion failed due to input error, bytes 0x9D 0x29 0x2E 0x20

Basically the error is:

encoding error : input conversion failed due to input error, bytes 0x9D 0x29 0x2E 0x20

encoding error : input conversion failed due to input error, bytes 0x9D 0x29 0x2E 0x20

I searched on google and the results were related to BeautifulSoup but the script is working when I am displaying the output on terminal itself, so I am not sure if the problem is with BeautifulSoup. Here is my code:

scrape.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import requests
import sys
import warnings
import signal
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import flask
from flask import Flask, render_template, jsonify, request

app = Flask(__name__)
# app.config["DEBUG"] = True

@app.route('/')
def index():
    return render_template('home.html')


# #To avoid warning messages 
# warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")

#Main function.
@app.route('/genData')
def scrape():
        status = request.args.get('jsdata')

    url = "https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/2018/organizations/"
    default = "https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com"

    genData_list = []

    if status: 
        response = requests.get(url)
        html = response.content
        soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'lxml')
        orgs = soup.findAll('li', attrs={'class': 'organization-card__container'})

        for org in orgs:
            link = org.find('a', attrs={'class': 'organization-card__link'})
            org_name = org['aria-label']
            org_link = default + link['href']
            response = requests.get(org_link)
            html = response.content
            soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
            tags = soup.findAll('li', attrs={
                'class': 'organization__tag organization__tag--technology'
                }
            )
            description_element = soup.find('div', attrs={'class': 'org__long-description'})
            description = description_element.p.text

            mdButton = soup.findAll('md-button', attrs={'class': 'md-primary org__meta-button'})

            contact = "No contact info available"
            for link in mdButton:
                if hasattr(link, 'href'):
                    if 'mailto:' in link['href']:
                        contact = link['href']
            tech = []
            for tag in tags:
                tech.append(tag.text)

            output_dict = {
                "organization" : org_name,
                "link" : org_link,
                "description" : description,
                "technologies" : tech,
                "contact" : contact
            }
            output = jsonify(output_dict)
            genData_list.append(output)

    return render_template('genData.html', genData=genData_list)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

home.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Organisation Data</title>
    </head>
    <body>

    <input type="button" id="start_output" value="START"></input>
    <div id="place_for_genData"></div>
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

    <script>
    $("#start_output").click(function(){
        var status = true;

        $.ajax({
        url: "/genData",
        type: "get",
        data: {jsdata: status},
        success: function(response) {
            $("#place_for_genData").html(response);
        },
        error: function(xhr) {
            //Do Something to handle error
        }
        });
    });
    </script>
    </body>
</html>

genData.html

<label id="value_lable">
{% for data in genData %}
    {{ data }}<br>
{% endfor %}
</label>

EDIT: This is the original script that prints output on terminal just fine.

Original Scrape.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import requests
import sys
import warnings
import signal
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import flask
import json
from flask import Flask, render_template, jsonify, request

# app = Flask(__name__)
# # app.config["DEBUG"] = True

# @app.route('/')
# def index():
#     return render_template('home.html')


# #To avoid warning messages 
# warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")

#Main function.
# @app.route('/genData')
def scrape():
    # status = request.args.get('jsdata')

    url = "https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/2018/organizations/"
    default = "https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com"

    genData_list = []


    response = requests.get(url)
    html = response.content
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'lxml')
    orgs = soup.findAll('li', attrs={'class': 'organization-card__container'})

    for org in orgs:
        link = org.find('a', attrs={'class': 'organization-card__link'})
        org_name = org['aria-label']
        org_link = default + link['href']
        response = requests.get(org_link)
        html = response.content
        soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
        tags = soup.findAll('li', attrs={
                'class': 'organization__tag organization__tag--technology'
            }
        )
        description_element = soup.find('div', attrs={'class': 'org__long-description'})
        description = description_element.p.text

        mdButton = soup.findAll('md-button', attrs={'class': 'md-primary org__meta-button'})

        contact = "No contact info available"
        for link in mdButton:
            if hasattr(link, 'href'):
                if 'mailto:' in link['href']:
                    contact = link['href']
        tech = []
        for tag in tags:
            tech.append(tag.text)

        output_dict = {
            "organization" : org_name,
            "link" : org_link,
            "description" : description,
            "technologies" : tech,
            "contact" : contact
        }
        output = json.dumps(output_dict)
        print(output)
        # genData_list.append(output)



if __name__ == '__main__':
    scrape()

OUTPUT

(venv) astanwar99@astanwar99-Predator-G3-572:~/DEVSPACE/WebDev/Web_Scrap_GSOC/GSoC-OrganisationScraper$ python temp.py
temp.py:44: UserWarning: No parser was explicitly specified, so I'm using the best available HTML parser for this system ("lxml"). This usually 
isn't a problem, but if you run this code on another system, or in a different virtual environment, it may use a different parser and behave differently.

The code that caused this warning is on line 44 of the file temp.py. To get rid of this warning, pass the additional argument 'features="lxml"' to 
the BeautifulSoup constructor.

soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
{"organization": "3DTK", "technologies": ["c/c++", " cmake", "opencv", "ros", "boost"], "contact": "mailto:johannes.schauer@uni-wuerzburg.de", 
"link": "https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/2018/organizations/5685665089978368/", "description": "The 3D Toolkit is a collection of 
programs that allow working with 3D point cloud data. The tools include a powerful and efficient 3D point cloud viewer called \"show\" which is 
 able to open point clouds containing millions of points even on older graphics cards while still providing high frame rates. It provides bindings 
 for ROS, the Robotic Operating System and for Python, the programming language. Most of the functionality of 3DTK is provided in the form of 
 \"tools\", hence the name which are executed on the command line. These tools are able to carry out operations like simultaneous localization and 
 mapping (SLAM), plane detection, transformations, surface normal computation, feature detection and extraction, collision detection and dynamic 
 object removal. We support Linux, Windows and MacOS. 3DTK contains the implementation of several complex algorithms like multiple SLAM and ICP 
 implementations as well as several data structures like k-d trees, octrees, sphere quadtrees and voxel grids. The software is home of the 
 implementation of algorithms from several high impact research papers. While the Point Cloud Library (PCL) might be dead, 3DTK is alive and 
 actively maintained by an international team of skilled researchers from all over the world, ranging from Europe to China. Know-how from 3DTK 
 influenced several businesses from car manufacturers to mineral excavation or archaeological projects."}

Feel free to suggest some other alternative or solution. I just want to display my output on localhost.

Answer 1

From the warning it looks like you need to specify the parser each time

soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'lxml')

You have a line which currently reads (inside of for org in orgs: ):

soup = BeautifulSoup(html)