Why Does My Python Code Throw a UnicodeEncodeError When Encoding Web Page Text?

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' Codec's Struggle with Non-ASCII Characters

When fetching text from diverse web pages, you might encounter the enigmatic "UnicodeEncodeError" indicating that the 'ascii' codec cannot encode a specific character. This inconsistency, where the code performs without issues for some pages but fails with others, often stems from the presence of non-ASCII characters.

In the provided code snippet, the issue arises when attempting to convert a Unicode string (likely containing the character ' ') to the 'ascii' encoded byte string. However, 'ascii' cannot represent this character, leading to the "ordinal not in range(128)" error.

Eliminating the Encoding Quandary

To resolve this quandary, abandon the practice of using str() to convert Unicode strings to encoded text. Instead, embrace the power of .encode() which explicitly encodes the string using the desired encoding, such as UTF-8.

Example of Encode Solution:

p.agent_info = u' '.join((agent_contact, agent_telno)).encode('utf-8').strip()

Alternatively, you could embrace the world of Unicode entirely, working exclusively with Unicode strings and avoiding the need for encoding and decoding operations.

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