Let JSON object accept bytes or let urlopen output strings
encoding, json, python, python-3.x, urlopen
Solution
HTTP sends bytes. If the resource in question is text, the character encoding is normally specified, either by the Content-Type HTTP header or by another mechanism (an RFC, HTML `meta http-equiv`,...).
`urllib` should know how to encode the bytes to a string, but it's too naïve—it's a horribly underpowered and un-Pythonic library.
Dive Into Python 3 provides an overview about the situation.
Your "work-around" is fine—although it feels wrong, it's the correct way to do it.
Problem
With Python 3 I am requesting a json document from a URL. ``` response = urllib.request.urlopen(request) ``` The `response` object is a file-like object with `read` and `readline` methods. Normally a JSON object can be created with a file opened in text mode. ``` obj = json.load(fp) ``` What I would like to do is: ``` obj = json.load(response) ``` This however does not work as urlopen returns a file object in binary mode. A work around is of course: ``` str_response = response.read().decode('utf-8') obj = json.loads(str_response) ``` but this feels bad... Is there a better way that I can transform a bytes file object to a string file object? Or am I missing any parameters for either `urlopen` or `json.load` to give an encoding?