Unicode character in Django project path

Question

I am using Django 1.7.3 on a Mac.

I have created a Django project in the following path:

/Users/cheng/百度云同步盘/Dev/django/testproject/

(The project is called 'testproject')

I am having trouble loading a template file:

/Users/cheng/百度云同步盘/Dev/django/testproject/
                                  -> vis
                                        -> templates
                                                 -> vis
                                                       -> index.html

(my app name is called 'vis')

When I hit the right URL, I got:

UnicodeEncodeError at /vis/
'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 13-18: ordinal not in range(128)

Python Path:        ['/Users/cheng/\xe7\x99\xbe\xe5\xba\xa6\xe4\xba\x91\xe5\x90\x8c\xe6\xad\xa5\xe7\x9b\x98/Dev/django/testproject' ...

Unicode error hint

The string that could not be encoded/decoded was: heng/百度云同步盘/Dev/

As you can see, the unicode portion of the path '百度云同步盘' has been ascii encoded as '\xe7\x99\xbe\xe5\xba\xa6\xe4\xba\x91\xe5\x90\x8c\xe6\xad\xa5\xe7\x9b\x98'.

Is there anyway to solve this problem besides moving the project to a non-unicode dir?

Thank you!

---

Update: I am using python 2.7.9. Full stack trace:

Environment:


Request Method: GET
Request URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000/vis/

Django Version: 1.7.3
Python Version: 2.7.9
Installed Applications:
('django.contrib.admin',
 'django.contrib.auth',
 'django.contrib.contenttypes',
 'django.contrib.sessions',
 'django.contrib.messages',
 'django.contrib.staticfiles',
 'vis')
Installed Middleware:
('django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
 'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
 'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
 'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware')


Traceback:
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py" in get_response
  111.                     response = wrapped_callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File "/Users/cheng/百度云同步盘/Dev/django/testproject/vis/views.py" in index
  7.     return render(request, 'vis/index.html', context)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/shortcuts.py" in render
  50.     return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs),
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader.py" in render_to_string
  170.         t = get_template(template_name, dirs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader.py" in get_template
  144.     template, origin = find_template(template_name, dirs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader.py" in find_template
  126.             loader = find_template_loader(loader_name)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loader.py" in find_template_loader
  98.         TemplateLoader = import_string(loader)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/module_loading.py" in import_string
  26.     module = import_module(module_path)
File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/importlib/__init__.py" in import_module
  37.     __import__(name)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loaders/app_directories.py" in <module>
  33. app_template_dirs = calculate_app_template_dirs()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loaders/app_directories.py" in calculate_app_template_dirs
  27.                 template_dir = template_dir.decode(fs_encoding)
File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/encodings/utf_8.py" in decode
  16.     return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True)

Exception Type: UnicodeEncodeError at /vis/
Exception Value: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 13-18: ordinal not in range(128)

Answer 1

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/template/loaders/app_directories.py" in calculate_app_template_dirs
  27.                 template_dir = template_dir.decode(fs_encoding)

This appears to be a bug in the Django template loader.

It is trying to .decode a string that it already Unicode, causing an implicit .encode to the default encoding which in your case is ASCII so it can't encode the Chinese. The string in question is a module file path, which comes from AppConfig.path, which is defined to be a Unicode string.

I suggest filing a bug against Django (eg ‘Template loader fails for path unencodable in default encoding’). In the meantime you could try to work around it by setting the default encoding to utf-8 in your sitecustomize.py, or just run your app from a directory whose path is all-ASCII.