UTF-8 string not displaying character properly

Question

I am returning text field from DB column:

 "algún nombre de juego"

when I try to use this text in an html file, I get the following string:

algÃºn nombre de juego

This happens consistently with any string that is not pure english. I have even tried grabbing simple text from online in different languages and as soon as I plug them into an html text box, the print out with improper encoding like the example above.

From reading Unicode documentation for python, UTF-8 should be able to handle pretty much any character in any language.

I have tried many ways of encoding/decoding, and either there is an encoding error, or I get back weird character where the letter u with acute should be.

Per comments, I am not using Django or Flask. Just taking strings from a DB that might be in several different languages and generating an HTML file for internal use.

HTML is not python. You need to convert the unicode characters to their HTML-entity equivalent (ú becomes ú) — pho
– pho, Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 20:53
@PranavHosangadi, am I correct to think that I need to pass a python string that is meant to be HTML through BeautifulSoup or something similar to make the conversion? Or is there a better approach? — kravb
– kravb, Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 20:58
@kravb It might be a good idea to also tag this question with the framework that you're (such as Django or Flask) using in order to get some more answers. — Llamax
– Llamax, Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 21:02
w3.org/International/questions/qa-html-encoding-declarations — rici
– rici, Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 21:05

Llamax · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-07 12:04:44Z

1

A few ideas:

1. Remember to declare the encoding. Either:

Insert a <meta charset="utf-8"> just after your <head> tag.

OR
do this in the HTTP header (making it look something like Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8). This can be done by changing the webserver's settings or using server-side code, should you choose to host the page.

2. Ensure that your IDE saves files as UTF-8. This will be somewhere in your settings and should be done automatically, but worth checking if option 1 doesn't work.

Hope one of these works.

edited Mar 7, 2021 at 12:04

answered Jan 21, 2021 at 21:15

Llamax

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