How to make __repr__ to return unicode string

Question

I call a __repr__() function on object x as follows:

val = x.__repr__()

and then I want to store val string to SQLite database. The problem is that val should be unicode.

I tried this with no success:

val = x.__repr__().encode("utf-8")

and

val = unicode(x.__repr__())

Do you know how to correct this?

I'm using Python 2.7.2

Solution 1

repr(x).decode("utf-8") and unicode(repr(x), "utf-8") should work.

Solution 2

The representation of an object should not be Unicode. Define the __unicode__ method and pass the object to unicode().

Solution 3

I was having a similar problem, because I was pulling the text out of a list using repr.

b =['text\xe2\x84\xa2', 'text2']  ## \xe2\x84\xa2 is the TM symbol
a = repr(b[0])
c = unicode(a, "utf-8")
print c

>>> 
'text\xe2\x84\xa2'

I finally tried join to get the text out of the list instead

b =['text\xe2\x84\xa2', 'text2']  ## \xe2\x84\xa2 is the TM symbol
a = ''.join(b[0])
c = unicode(a, "utf-8")
print c

>>> 
text™

Now it works!!!!

I tried several different ways. Each time I used repr with the unicode function it did not work. I have to use join or declare the text like in variable e below.

b =['text\xe2\x84\xa2', 'text2']  ## \xe2\x84\xa2 is the TM symbol
a = ''.join(b[0])
c = unicode(repr(a), "utf-8")
d = repr(a).decode("utf-8")
e = "text\xe2\x84\xa2"
f = unicode(e, "utf-8")
g = unicode(repr(e), "utf-8")
h = repr(e).decode("utf-8")
i = unicode(a, "utf-8")
j = unicode(''.join(e), "utf-8")
print c
print d
print e
print f
print g
print h
print i
print j

*** Remote Interpreter Reinitialized  ***
>>> 
'text\xe2\x84\xa2'
'text\xe2\x84\xa2'
textâ„¢
text™
'text\xe2\x84\xa2'
'text\xe2\x84\xa2'
text™
text™
>>> 

Hope this helps.

Solution 4

In Python2, you can define two methods:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8

class Person(object):

    def __init__(self, name):

        self.name = name

    def __unicode__(self):
        return u"Person info <name={0}>".format(self.name)

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.__unicode__().encode('utf-8')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    A = Person(u"皮特")
    print A

In Python3, just define __repr__ will be ok:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8

class Person(object):

    def __init__(self, name):

        self.name = name

    def __repr__(self):
        return u"Person info <name={0}>".format(self.name)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    A = Person(u"皮特")
    print(A)

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Comments

[xralf]

OK, but here the object was not mine but from a library.

[Joucks]

Could you explain why the representation of an object is not supposed to be unicode ? Thanks

[Aaron Digulla]

@Joucks: See stackoverflow.com/questions/3627793/…