AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'decode'

Question

names, plot_dicts = [], []
for repo_dict in repo_dicts:
    names.append(repo_dict['name'])
    plot_dict = {
        'value': repo_dict['stargazers_count'],
        'label': repo_dict['description'],
        'xlink': repo_dict['owner']['html_url'],
        }
    plot_dicts.append(plot_dict)

my_style = LS('#333366', base_style=LCS)
chart = pygal.Bar(style=my_style, x_label_rotation=45, show_legend=False)
chart.title = 'Most-Stared Python Project On Github'
chart.x_labels = names
chart.add('', plot_dicts)

chart.render_to_file('new_repos.svg')

*If I run this, there will be an error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "new_repos.py", line 54, in <module>
    chart.render_to_file('new_repos.svg')
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\public.py", line 114, in render_to_file
    f.write(self.render(is_unicode=True, **kwargs))
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\public.py", line 52, in render
    self.setup(**kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\base.py", line 217, in setup
    self._draw()
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\graph.py", line 933, in _draw
    self._plot()
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\bar.py", line 146, in _plot
    self.bar(serie)
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\graph\bar.py", line 116, in bar 
    metadata)
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\util.py", line 234, in decorate 
    metadata['label'])
  File "C:\Users\Cao Kangkang\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python36\site-packages\pygal\_compat.py", line 62, in to_unicode
    return string.decode('utf-8')
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'decode'

*How ever if I change part of the code to this, the error will disappear, *however the description will be ignored in the chart.

names, plot_dicts = [], []
for repo_dict in repo_dicts:
    names.append(repo_dict['name'])
    plot_dict = {
        'value': repo_dict['stargazers_count'],
        #'label': repo_dict['description'],
        'xlink': repo_dict['owner']['html_url'],
        }
    plot_dicts.append(plot_dict)

*I don't know why, Can anyone help me with this problem?

Answer 1

'label':str(repo_dict['description'])

Try str() like above, it seems the data you got before hasn't clarifed the type of value that 'description' storged.