How would I make a byte string a normal string?

Question

I have a python webserver that handles mostly POST requests and writes them to a text file but in the text file its written b'string' which is not suitable for what i will be using the string for. So how do I convert it to a normal string?

Here is my code

from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler

from io import BytesIO


class SimpleHTTPRequestHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write("Page is only for POST")

    def do_POST(self):
        content_length = int(self.headers['Content-Length'])
        body = self.rfile.read(content_length)
        self.send_response(200)
        self.end_headers()
        response = BytesIO()
        response.write(b"POST")
        txt = open("POST.txt", "w")
        txt.write(str(body))
        response.write(body)
        self.wfile.write(response.getvalue())
        print(body)

httpd = HTTPServer(('localhost', 8000), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
httpd.serve_forever()

ShadowRanger · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-12 17:52:47Z

1

You're receiving raw bytes from the request; unless you need to modify the encoding, you should just write raw bytes instead of trying to write text. In this case, the only change needed is to change from:

txt = open("POST.txt", "w")
txt.write(str(body))

to:

txt = open("POST.txt", "wb")  # Binary mode
txt.write(body)  # Don't convert to str

To do it properly, it should really be:

with open("POST.txt", "wb") as txt:
    txt.write(body)

so the with statement ensures the data is promptly written and the file properly closed in a deterministic fashion.

answered Nov 12, 2020 at 17:52

ShadowRanger

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Comments

Richa Bhuwania · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-12 17:55:32Z

0

The data received over HTTP is in byte form. You need to decode it before writing it to the file. Replace txt.write(str(body)) with txt.write(body.decode("utf-8")). This will convert your code back to the string format. The complete code will be as such:

from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler

from io import BytesIO


class SimpleHTTPRequestHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write("Page is only for POST")

    def do_POST(self):
        content_length = int(self.headers['Content-Length'])
        body = self.rfile.read(content_length)
        self.send_response(200)
        self.end_headers()
        response = BytesIO()
        response.write(b"POST")
        txt = open("POST.txt", "w")
        txt.write(body.decode("utf-8"))
        response.write(body)
        self.wfile.write(response.getvalue())
        print(body)

httpd = HTTPServer(('localhost', 8000), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
httpd.serve_forever()

answered Nov 12, 2020 at 17:55

Richa Bhuwania

17810 bronze badges

1 Comment

Lavacat Over a year ago

Thanks, your code worked and my file no longer had a byte string.

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