Question

I’m using MySQLdb, I use:

cursor.execute(QUERY)

Where QYERY is:

INSERT (A,B,C) VALUES("%s","%s",something);'%(k1, u'W')**

w Is a persian letter (literally it is! I just replaced it with W in case you have problem viewing persian letters, it is something like ب), and k1 is english. but i get:

`Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./i.py", line 47, in <module>
    c.doit(db)
  File "./i.py", line 41, in doit
    db.cr.execute('INSERT (A,B,C) VALUES("%s","%s",something);'%(k1, u'ب'))
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 174, in execute
    self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 36, in defaulterrorhandler
    raise errorclass, errorvalue
_mysql_exceptions.ProgrammingError: (1064, 'You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near \'(term_tit,term_desc,term_cat) VALUES("a\n","\xd8\xa8",general)\' at line 1')`

See? the W letter turns into “\xd8\xa8” What should i do?

Update: The mistake in sql query is fixed, BUT the \xd8\xa8 problem persists,
now when retrieving data from Database, i get “??????” instead of what i entered

Answer 1

You’re missing an INTO table_name clause. That’s the only actual problem I see.

The changing of ب to \xd8\xa8 just means that your Unicode is getting encoded as UTF-8 on the way to the database (which is probably what you want). MySQL is reporting the UTF-8-encoded bytes by using a \xXX notation (hexadecimal escape sequences; for example, \x20 means an ASCII space) to give an all-ASCII error message (which can be a bit cryptic, especially if you’re not used to it, but it’s not a problem).