Python Unicode and MIMEE

Question

Hi Guys,

Can someone who is way smarter than I tell me what I'm doing wrong.. Shouldn't this simply process...

# encoding: utf-8
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText

msg = MIMEText("hi")
msg.set_charset('utf-8')
print msg.as_string()

a = 'Ho\xcc\x82tel Ste\xcc\x81phane '
b = unicode(a, "utf-8")

print b

msg = MIMEText(b)
msg.set_charset('utf-8')
print msg.as_string()

I'm stumped...

Answer 1

Assuming Python 2.* (alas, you don't tell us whether you're on Python 3, but as you're using print as a statement it looks like you aren't): MIMEText" takes a string -- a plain string, NOT a Unicode object. So, use b.encode('utf-8') as the argument if what you start with is a Unicode object b`.