Convert Every Dictionary Value To Utf-8 (dictionary Comprehension?)

I have a dictionary and I want to convert every value to utf-8. This works, but is there a 'more pythonic' way? for key in row.keys(): row[key] = unico

Solution 1:

Use a dictionary comprehension. It looks like you're starting with a dictionary so:

mydict = {k: unicode(v).encode("utf-8") for k,v in mydict.iteritems()}

The example for dictionary comprehensions is near the end of the block in the link.

Solution 2:

Python 3 version building on that one answer by That1Guy.

{k: str(v).encode("utf-8") for k,v in mydict.items()}

Solution 3:

As I had this problem as well, I built a very simple function that allows any dict to be decoded in utf-8 (The problem with the current answer is that it applies only for simple dict).

If it can help anyone, it is great, here is the function :

defutfy_dict(dic):
    ifisinstance(dic,unicode):
        return(dic.encode("utf-8"))
    elifisinstance(dic,dict):
        for key in dic:
            dic[key] = utfy_dict(dic[key])
        return(dic)
    elifisinstance(dic,list):
        new_l = []
        for e in dic:
            new_l.append(utfy_dict(e))
        return(new_l)
    else:
        return(dic)

Solution 4:

It depends why you're implicitly encoding to UTF-8. If it's because you're writing to a file, the pythonic way is to leave your strings as Unicode and encode on output:

with io.open("myfile.txt", "w", encoding="UTF-8") as my_file:
    for (key, values) in row.items():
        my_string = u"{key}: {value}".format(key=key, value=value)
        my_file.write(my_string)

Solution 5:

You can just iterate through the keys if you wanted to:

{x:unicode(a[x]).encode("utf-8") for x in a.keys()}