How to Resolve Unicode Errors When Using Python and MySQL with JSON Data?

Python & MySQL: Unicode and Encoding

When parsing JSON data and storing it in a MySQL database, you may encounter Unicode errors if the data contains non-ASCII characters. This error typically occurs because the database or Python cannot encode or decode the data correctly. To resolve this issue, you need to modify the database or Python implementation to ensure proper encoding and handling of Unicode characters.

Handling Unicode Errors from the Database Side

To handle Unicode errors from the database side, you can modify the table's character set and collation to support Unicode encoding. In your case, you can modify the table yahoo_questions as follows:

ALTER TABLE yahoo_questions CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

This will change the table's character set to UTF-8 and the collation to case-insensitive Unicode collation.

Handling Unicode Errors from the Python Side

Alternatively, you can handle Unicode errors from the Python side by explicitly specifying the encoding when inserting data into the database. In your Python code, modify the execute statement as follows:

cur.execute("INSERT INTO yahoo_questions (question_id, question_subj, question_content, question_userId, question_timestamp,"
            +"category_id, category_name, choosen_answer, choosen_userId, choosen_usernick, choosen_ans_timestamp)"
            +"VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s)", (row[2], row[5], row[6], quserId, questionTime, categoryId, categoryName, qChosenAnswer, choosenUserId, choosenNickName, choosenTimeStamp), {'charset': 'utf8'})

By adding the 'charset': 'utf8' parameter to the execute statement, you explicitly tell MySQLdb to encode the data using UTF-8 encoding before inserting it into the database.

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