TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

Question

plaintext = input("Please enter the text you want to compress")
filename = input("Please enter the desired filename")
with gzip.open(filename + ".gz", "wb") as outfile:
    outfile.write(plaintext) 

The above python code is giving me following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Users/Ankur Gupta/Desktop/Python_works/gzip_work1.py", line 33, in <module>
    compress_string()
  File "C:/Users/Ankur Gupta/Desktop/Python_works/gzip_work1.py", line 15, in compress_string
    outfile.write(plaintext)
  File "C:\Python32\lib\gzip.py", line 312, in write
    self.crc = zlib.crc32(data, self.crc) & 0xffffffff
TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

Answer 1

If you use Python3x then string is not the same type as for Python 2.x, you must cast it to bytes (encode it).

plaintext = input("Please enter the text you want to compress")
filename = input("Please enter the desired filename")
with gzip.open(filename + ".gz", "wb") as outfile:
    outfile.write(bytes(plaintext, 'UTF-8'))

Also do not use variable names like string or file while those are names of module or function.

EDIT @Tom

Yes, non-ASCII text is also compressed/decompressed. I use Polish letters with UTF-8 encoding:

plaintext = 'Polish text: ąćęłńóśźżĄĆĘŁŃÓŚŹŻ'
filename = 'foo.gz'
with gzip.open(filename, 'wb') as outfile:
    outfile.write(bytes(plaintext, 'UTF-8'))
with gzip.open(filename, 'r') as infile:
    outfile_content = infile.read().decode('UTF-8')
print(outfile_content)