UnicodeDecodeError when import json file

Question

I want to open a json file in python and I have the error:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 64864: ordinal not in range(128)

my code is quite simple:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import json

with open('birdw3l2.json') as data_file:    
    data = json.load(data_file)
print(data)

Someone can help me? Thanks!

Hassan Mehmood · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-23 11:29:23Z

0

Try the following code.

import json

with open('birdw3l2.json') as data_file:    
    data = json.load(data_file).decode('utf-8')
print(data)

answered May 23, 2016 at 11:09

Hassan Mehmood

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5 Comments

doesn't change a thing :(

no it's always the same problem. Actually even i don't do print, the error still remains...

Actually your file contains some special characters. If its a small file, write it again

or write a program to first remove that special character

well its a quite large data file

Jeffery · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-23 11:52:35Z

0

You should specify your encoding format when you load your json file. like this:

 data = json.load(data_file, encoding='utf-8')

The encoding depends on your file encoding.

answered May 23, 2016 at 11:52

Jeffery

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python 3.x no longer has encoding=: docs.python.org/3/library/json.html