Latin-9 exported CSV file Flask

Question

I am trying to export data from the database to a CSV file. The export is done perfectly, however, I have some Arabic text in the database where when exporting the data, I get Latin-9 characters. As below. (I am on Windows)

When this CSV file is opened in Notepad, I can see the correct values

ID,Serial,City,Office
1,ASDF4321,مصر,مصر
2,FDSA1234,السعودية,السعودية
3,ASDF4321,مصر,مصر
4,FDSA1234,السعودية,السعودية

My code is:

import csv
from io import BytesIO, StringIO

from flask import Flask, send_file
from flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy

app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)

app.config["SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI"] = "sqlite:///app.sqlite3"
db = SQLAlchemy(app)


class Device(db.Model):
    __tablename__ = "device"
    id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
    serial = db.Column(db.String(255), nullable=True)
    city = db.Column(db.String(255), nullable=True)
    office = db.Column(db.String(255), nullable=True)

    def __repr__(self):
        return f"<Device {self.serial!r}, {self.city!r}, {self.office!r}>"


with app.app_context():
    db.create_all()

    device1 = Device(serial="ASDF4321", city="مصر", office="مصر")
    device2 = Device(serial="FDSA1234", city="السعودية", office="السعودية")
    db.session.add(device1)
    db.session.add(device2)
    db.session.commit()


@app.route("/", methods=["GET"])
def index():
    return "Home"


@app.route("/export", methods=["GET", "POST"])
def export():
    si = StringIO()
    devices = Device.query.all()
    csvwriter = csv.writer(si, delimiter=",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    csvwriter.writerow(["ID", "Serial", "City", "Office"])
    for i, device in enumerate(devices, start=1):
        csvwriter.writerow([i, device.serial, device.city, device.office])
    mem = BytesIO()
    mem.write(si.getvalue().encode())
    mem.seek(0)
    si.close()
    return send_file(
        mem, mimetype="text/csv", download_name="Export-File.csv", as_attachment=True
    )


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(debug=True)

How can I export to a CSV file and have it look like this:

Asked By: Tes3awy

||

Source

Answer 1

I managed to solve the issue and I had to add the byte order mark (BOM) which is a Unicode character that is used to indicate that a file is encoded in UTF-8. It must be added as the first character in the file.

@app.route("/export", methods=["GET", "POST"])
def export():
    si = StringIO()
    si.write("ufeff") # This line
    devices = Device.query.all()
    csvwriter = csv.writer(si, delimiter=",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    csvwriter.writerow(["ID", "Serial", "City", "Office"])
    for i, device in enumerate(devices, start=1):
        csvwriter.writerow([i, device.serial, device.city, device.office])
    mem = BytesIO()
    mem.write(si.getvalue().encode())
    mem.seek(0)
    si.close()
    return send_file(
        mem, mimetype="text/csv", download_name="Export-File.csv", as_attachment=True
    )

OR

Use "".encode("utf-8-sig"). The utf-8-sig codec will prepend the BOM at the beginning.

@app.route("/export", methods=["GET", "POST"])
def export():
    si = StringIO()
    devices = Device.query.all()
    csvwriter = csv.writer(si, delimiter=",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    csvwriter.writerow(["ID", "Serial", "City", "Office"])
    for i, device in enumerate(devices, start=1):
        csvwriter.writerow([i, device.serial, device.city, device.office])
    mem = BytesIO()
    mem.write(si.getvalue().encode("utf-8-sig")) # Edit here
    mem.seek(0)
    si.close()
    return send_file(
        mem, mimetype="text/csv", download_name="Export-File.csv", as_attachment=True
    )

Answered By: Tes3awy

Latin-9 exported CSV file Flask

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