How to write UTF-8 in a CSV file

Martin picture Martin · Sep 12, 2013 · Viewed 142.5k times · Source

I am trying to create a text file in csv format out of a PyQt4 QTableWidget. I want to write the text with a UTF-8 encoding because it contains special characters. I use following code:

import codecs
...
myfile = codecs.open(filename, 'w','utf-8')
...
f = result.table.item(i,c).text()
myfile.write(f+";")

It works until the cell contains a special character. I tried also with

myfile = open(filename, 'w')
...
f = unicode(result.table.item(i,c).text(), "utf-8")

But it also stops when a special character appears. I have no idea what I am doing wrong.

Answer

kqw picture kqw · Jul 26, 2015

From your shell run:

pip2 install unicodecsv

And (unlike the original question) presuming you're using Python's built in csv module, turn
import csv into
import unicodecsv as csv in your code.