Transform URL string into normal string in Python (%20 to space etc)

Question

Is there any way in Python to transform this %CE%B1%CE%BB%20 into this ?? which is its real representation?

Jaymon · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-01T21:51:39

For python 2:

>>> import urllib2
>>> print urllib2.unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20")
??

For python 3:

>>> from urllib.parse import unquote
>>> print(unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20"))
??

And here’s code that works in all versions:

try:
    from urllib import unquote
except ImportError:
    from urllib.parse import unquote

print(unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20"))

Mark Byers · Answer 2 · 2012-08-01T21:52:01

There are two encodings in play here. Your string has first been encoded as UTF-8, then each byte has been percent-encoded.

To get the original string back you need to first unquote it, and then decode it:

>>> import urllib
>>> s="%CE%B1%CE%BB%20"
>>> result = urllib.unquote(s).decode('utf8')
>>> print result
??

Note that you need a Unicode enabled console in order to display the value (if you get an error with the print statement, try running it in IDLE).

Ehsan · Answer 3 · 2018-06-26T19:16:55

python 3 answer

import urllib 
urllib.parse.unquote('/El%20Ni%C3%B1o/')

'/El Niño/'