Python prints string with "+" sign in between

Question

I extracted comments made in a website by converting the POST payload from the website to JSON and extracting the value in the comments field in Python.

The JSON looks something like this:

{
    .
    .
    "comment": "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog"
    .
    .
}

When I print the comment using the print() function, this is how the comment is printed: The+Quick+Brown+Fox+Jumped+Over+The+Lazy+Dog

The type of the comment seems to be 'unicode'. I have tried everything mentioned here and here but those don't solve my problem.

I am using python 2.7. Right now I am printing it for debugging purposes but I want to store it in a database later. So I would need a permanent solution to convert unicode to string.

EDIT: I use var = json.loads(payload_from_POST) to convert the POST payload to JSON. Then I extract the value of "comment" by var['comment'].

@user1753919 I get 'u'' followed by the string with plus signs between the words — Sri Hari Vignesh, Apr 19 '17 at 22:54
As @wim says, translating space to `+` is part of URL encoding. So something is not doing the necessary URL decoding before processing the JSON. Post your code so we can see what you're doing. — Barmar, Apr 19 '17 at 22:56
one solution is to replace the "+" with " " using replace command. — plasmon360, Apr 19 '17 at 22:57
payload_from_post... what is that exactly? You are implementing server side code, right? Where did you get the post data, exactly? — tdelaney, Apr 19 '17 at 23:01
If you're writing server-side code, there are libraries to parse the POST data. — Barmar, Apr 19 '17 at 23:02
@Barmar no I am just writing client side. I have no control over the server I am getting the data from — Sri Hari Vignesh, Apr 19 '17 at 23:03
How does a client get POST data from the server? POST data goes from the client to the server. Show how you're setting `payload_from_POST`. — Barmar, Apr 19 '17 at 23:04
@Barmar I get POST payload through a web hook (github webhook). When an event happens in my Pull Request, I get a POST message from the github web hook I had setup. — Sri Hari Vignesh, Apr 19 '17 at 23:06

Nenya Edjah · Answer 1 · 2017-04-19T23:25:54.037

This is a matter of parsing a request string into an appropriate dictionary representation. To do so, you can use the parse_qs function.

In Python 2,

from urlparse import parse_qs

var = parse_qs(payload_from_POST)
print var['comment'][0]

In Python 3

from urllib.parse import parse_qs

var = parse_qs(payload_from_POST)
print(var['comment'][0])

An important note: parse_qs will return a JSON that maps keys to lists, NOT strings. So in order to actually print "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog", you have to access var['comment'][0], because var['comment'] would just return you a list with one element in it.

Python prints string with "+" sign in between

1 Answers1