TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'?

Question

How can I convert this data to save the subtitle?

data={"tt0064621":
     {"title": "Name of movie - 1971",
      "subtitle": "b'1\\n00:00:40,916 --> 00:00:46,346\\n\\xe2\\x99\\xaa A"
                "\\B \\xe2\\x99\\xaa\\n\\n2\\n00:00:47,381 --> 00:00:50,174"
                "\\n\\xe2\\x99\\xaa It\\'s C \\xe2\\x99\\xaa\\n\\n3\\n00:00:50,175 -->'"}}

sub_create= data["tt0064621"]['subtitle']

saved_file_name = "subtitle.srt"
with open(saved_file_name, 'wb') as f:
    f.write(sub_create) #sub_create.encode() Doesn't work

Answer 1

Since what's in your subtitle field is Python code, you can just call eval on it. Here's a version of your code updated to do that:

import ast

data={"tt0064621":
     {"title": "Name of movie - 1971",
      "subtitle": "b'1\\n00:00:40,916 --> 00:00:46,346\\n\\xe2\\x99\\xaa A"
                "\\B \\xe2\\x99\\xaa\\n\\n2\\n00:00:47,381 --> 00:00:50,174"
                "\\n\\xe2\\x99\\xaa It\\'s C \\xe2\\x99\\xaa\\n\\n3\\n00:00:50,175 -->'"}}

sub_create= ast.literal_eval(data["tt0064621"]['subtitle']) # <-- added call to

saved_file_name = "/tmp/subtitle.srt"
with open(saved_file_name, 'wb') as f:
    f.write(sub_create) #sub_create.encode() Doesn't work

Resulting contents of '/tmp/subtitle.srt':

1
00:00:40,916 --> 00:00:46,346
♪ A\B ♪

2
00:00:47,381 --> 00:00:50,174
♪ It's C ♪

3
00:00:50,175 -->

This is a kinda strange thing to have to do, but if you can't change the format of your data, then this seems like a good way to go about the problem. It would be better if you could change your data to not have Python code embedded in it (or something else that looks like a Python byte array constant).

UPDATE: Please heed @kaya3's warning about worrying about where this data might be coming from and so the risk of running a full eval on it, I've changed the code per their suggestion to use a safer alternative, ast.literal_eval .