Question

Is there anybody who knows how to solve the next problem?

Right now I am using this code:

def databasedump(request):
    # Convert file existing_db.db to SQL dump file dump.sql
    con = sqlite3.connect('database.sqlite')
    with open('dump.sql', 'w') as f:  
        for line in con.iterdump():
            f.write('%s\n' % line)

and I get this error:

Exception Type:
UnicodeEncodeError

Exception Value:
‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xe9′ in position 112: ordinal not in range(128)

The string that could not be encoded/decoded was: (Arivé, PAK

Thanks for looking into this!

Answer 1

There is a bug in the sqlite3 dump code, tracked as issue 15019 in the Python bug tracker.

You can fix this by editing the sqlite3/dump.py file and adding the following line at the top:

from __future__ import unicode_literals

Locate the file by running the following command:

python -c 'import sqlite3.dump; print sqlite3.dump.__file__.rstrip("c")'

You’ll have to adjust the line writing code to encode the unicode values that now will be returned from the .iterdump() method:

with open('dump.sql', 'w') as f:  
    for line in con.iterdump():
        f.write('%s\n' % line.encode('utf8'))

If you feel uncomfortable with editing the Python standard library source files, use the following (fixed and shortened) function instead:

def iterdump(connection):
    cu = connection.cursor()
    yield(u'BEGIN TRANSACTION;')

    q = """
        SELECT "name", "type", "sql"
        FROM "sqlite_master"
            WHERE "sql" NOT NULL AND
            "type" == 'table'
        """
    schema_res = cu.execute(q)
    for table_name, type, sql in sorted(schema_res.fetchall()):
        if table_name == 'sqlite_sequence':
            yield(u'DELETE FROM "sqlite_sequence";')
        elif table_name == 'sqlite_stat1':
            yield(u'ANALYZE "sqlite_master";')
        elif table_name.startswith('sqlite_'):
            continue
        else:
            yield(u'{0};'.format(sql))

        table_name_ident = table_name.replace('"', '""')
        res = cu.execute('PRAGMA table_info("{0}")'.format(table_name_ident))
        column_names = [str(table_info[1]) for table_info in res.fetchall()]
        q = """SELECT 'INSERT INTO "{0}" VALUES({1})' FROM "{0}";""".format(
            table_name_ident,
            ",".join("""'||quote("{0}")||'""".format(col.replace('"', '""')) for col in column_names))
        query_res = cu.execute(q)
        for row in query_res:
            yield(u"{0};".format(row[0]))

    q = """
        SELECT "name", "type", "sql"
        FROM "sqlite_master"
            WHERE "sql" NOT NULL AND
            "type" IN ('index', 'trigger', 'view')
        """
    schema_res = cu.execute(q)
    for name, type, sql in schema_res.fetchall():
        yield(u'{0};'.format(sql))

    yield(u'COMMIT;')

Use the above like this:

con = sqlite3.connect('database.sqlite')
with open('dump.sql', 'w') as f:  
    for iterdump(con):
        f.write('%s\n' % line.encode('utf8'))