Python writes German umlaute to file

Question

I know this question has been asked millions of times. But I still stick to that. I am using python 2 and cannot upgrade to python 3.

The problem is this:

>>> w = u"ümlaut"
>>> w
>>> u'\xfcmlaut'
>>> print w
ümlaut
>>> dic = {'key': w}
>>> dic
{'key': u'\xfcmlaut'}
>>> f = io.open('testtt.sql', mode='a', encoding='UTF8')
>>> f.write(u'%s' % dic)

then the file has:

{'key': u'\xfcmlaut'}

I need {'key': 'ümlaut'}or{'key': u'ümlaut'}

What I miss, I'm still a noob in encoding decoding things: /

Answer 1

I'm not sure why you want this format, especially since it will not be valid for reading in any other application, but it doesn’t matter.

The problem is that to write a dictionary into a file, you need to convert it to a string - and for this, Python calls reprfor all its elements.

If you create output manually as a string, all is well:

d = "{'key': '%s'}" % w
with io.open('testtt.sql', mode='a', encoding='UTF8') as f:
    f.write(d)

Answer 2

- python3, , , json, .

import io
import json
import sys

reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8')

w = u"ümlaut"
dic = {'key': w}
f = io.open('testtt.sql', mode='a', encoding='utf8')
f.write(unicode(json.dumps(dic, ensure_ascii=False).encode('utf8')))