Chatterbot: encoding output response as utf-8 string

[ThomasKoscheck]

I want to request, if it is possible to encode the response from chatterbot with utf-8, because in the moment it is an object as far as I know and that is problematic for the use with special characters and umlauts (ä,ö,ü).

Python is giving me the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/telepot/__init__.py", line 781, in collector
    callback(item)
  File "chatterbot.py", line 42, in handle
    bot.sendMessage(chat_id, str(response))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\ufffd' in position 11: ordinal not in range(128)

_I am using Chatterbot with the Telegram- API_

The code for this is:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf8
...
def handle(msg):
    global chat_id 
    chat_id = msg['chat']['id']
    command = msg['text'].encode('utf8')  #Incoming text from telegramuser

    response = susan.get_response(command) #response from chatterbot to the given text

    bot.sendMessage(chat_id, str(response)) #trys to reply response to the telegramchat

[gunthercox]

I believe your unicode header is incorrect. It should be # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

[ThomasKoscheck]

I tried it with both versions of the headers, but for that it doesnt make any difference.

[gunthercox]

ChatterBot is able to handle unicode values correctly. You can pass it non-encoded data and it should be able to process it properly (you'll just need to decode the output that it returns).

Bellow is one of ChatterBot's tests from tests/test_chatbot.py, this is just a simple check that a unicode response can be passed in.

    def test_get_response_unicode(self):
        """
        Test the case that a unicode string is passed in.
        """
        response = self.chatbot.get_response(u'سلام')
        self.assertGreater(len(response.text), 0)

This test passes in both Python 2.7 and 3.x. It also demonstrates that ChatterBot currently _can_ take unicode input without issue. Based on this, I believe the unicode error you are encountering may be in your own code, rather than ChatterBot's (I could be wrong, but this is pretty strong evidence).

[ThomasKoscheck]

You are right, there was a issue in my encoding. Thanks for your help!

You can close this issue.

[mouhsinelonly]

@ThomasKoscheck can you post how you solved your problem i am facing the same issue, i cant use arabic with chatterbot

[ThomasKoscheck]

@mouhsinelonly This is my solution:

def on_chat_message(self, msg):
        global chat_id
        content_type, chat_type, chat_id = telepot.glance(msg)
        **reload(sys)**
        **sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")**

        try:            
            chat_id = msg['chat']['id']
            firstname = msg['from']['first_name']**.encode('utf8')**
            username = msg['from']['username']**.encode('utf8')**

The bold ones are the important ones.

[vkosuri]

edited version

def on_chat_message(self, msg):
    global chat_id
    content_type, chat_type, chat_id = telepot.glance(msg)
    reload(sys)
    sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")

    try:
        chat_id = msg['chat']['id']
        firstname = msg['from']['first_name'].encode('utf8')
        username = msg['from']['username'].encode('utf8')

[mouhsinelonly]

i solved another way by using python3 and exporting the envitrenment
encoding for python . thank you

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017, 4:52 AM Mallikarjunarao Kosuri <
[email protected]> wrote:

correct format

def on_chat_message(self, msg):
global chat_id
content_type, chat_type, chat_id = telepot.glance(msg)
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")

try:
    chat_id = msg['chat']['id']
    firstname = msg['from']['first_name']*.encode('utf8')*
    username = msg['from']['username']*.encode('utf8')*

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