In this article, We’ll discuss encode and decode methods in Python. These methods help to encode and decode the input string according to the encoding specified. We’ll take a closer look at these two functions.
Python Encode and Decode String
In Python, encoding and decoding a string can be done using the encode and decode methods provided by the str class.
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How To Encode String in Python
The encode() method in Python is used to encode a string using the encoding that is specified. Bytes is returned by this function. Some commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16, and ASCII. If no encoding is specified, the default is “utf-8.”
The Syntax:
input_string.encode(encoding, errors)
Where params:
- input_string : This is source string.
- encoding : This is the type of encoding.
- errors : This contains have strict, ignore, replace and backslashreplace.
This method return result as an object:
Simple Example to Encode string:
s = 'Pythonpip' bytes_encoded = s.encode() print(type(bytes_encoded))
In the above example, the encode method is used to convert the s to a byte string using the UTF-8 encoding.
Output :
b'Pythonpip'
The b character in the output indicates that the encoded string is a byte string.
How To Decode String in Python
This is the reverse of encode() method. The decode() method helps to convert a stream of bytes to a string object.
The Syntax:
byte_seq.decode()
The decode() converts bytes to a Python string.
Decode the byte string to a string:
bytes_encoded = b'Pythonpip' decoded_string = bytes_encoded.decode() print(decoded_string)
Output :
Pythonpip