Converting Raw Unicode to Readable Text in Python with Selenium

Learn how to convert raw Unicode strings to readable text in Python using Selenium, with practical examples for both Python 2 and 3.
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Converting Raw Unicode to Readable Text in Python with Selenium

Working with web data often involves dealing with strings in various formats, and sometimes you might come across raw Unicode strings that appear quite messy. If you’re coding in Python using Selenium to extract data, you may encounter situations like this: instead of getting readable text from your HTML source, you get raw Unicode escape sequences. In this guide, we'll solve the problem of converting raw Unicode to normal readable text in Python.

The Problem

While gathering text from HTML pages using Selenium, you might retrieve something like:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This is a raw Unicode string that doesn’t provide the expected output of readable text. For instance, you might want this to show up as:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

If you're new to coding, it can be confusing to deal with text encoding and decoding. But don’t worry; in this post, we’re going to break it down step by step.

Understanding Unicode Strings

When strings are retrieved in raw format like the one shown above, they are often treated as "raw strings". In Python, a raw string is defined by a prefix r, which means the backslashes in the string are treated as literal characters, and not as escape characters. Hence, when attempting to print or decode them as regular strings, they won’t convert correctly.

Example of Raw String Behavior

Let's see an example of this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This will still output as the raw Unicode, rather than the readable text.

Solution with Python 3

To convert this raw Unicode string into readable text in Python 3, you can use the following method:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Steps Explained:

Encoding to UTF-8: This converts the string into a bytes representation.

Decoding with 'unicode-escape': This interprets the bytes and turns it into the correct Unicode format.

Expected Output

Running the above code will give you the desired output:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Solution with Python 2

If you’re working with Python 2, you can achieve the same outcome with a slightly different method. Here’s what you need to do:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation:

Decoding with 'unicode-escape': Similar to the above, this will transform the raw Unicode representation into a usable string.

Encoding back to UTF-8: Ensures that the output is in a readable format.

Expected Output

This will also yield the readable text correctly.

Conclusion

Encountering raw Unicode strings can be a commonplace challenge when scraping data from HTML using Selenium. Understanding how to convert these strings into easily readable text is essential for effective data manipulation. By using the methods provided for both Python 2 and 3, you can seamlessly navigate through this issue and manage your data effortlessly.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have further questions or need more examples on this topic! Happy coding!