Decode an ENCODED unicode string in Python

Question

I need to decode a \"UNICODE\" encoded string:

>>> id = u\'abcdß\'
>>> encoded_id = id.encode(\'utf-8\')
>>> encoded_id
\'abcd\\xc         


        

Answer 1

You have UTF-8 encoded data (there is no such thing as UNICODE encoded data).

Encode the unicode value to Latin-1, then decode from UTF8:

encoded_id.encode('latin1').decode('utf8')

Latin 1 maps the first 255 unicode points one-on-one to bytes.

Demo:

>>> encoded_id = u'abcd\xc3\x9f'
>>> encoded_id.encode('latin1').decode('utf8')
u'abcd\xdf'
>>> print encoded_id.encode('latin1').decode('utf8')
abcdß