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.

Answer 1

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

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

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').

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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)