how to convert from unicode to utf8 in python?

I'm working on my python script to extract the data from sqlite3 database for xbmc media application.

I can see that in my code it will extract the data using the unicode object where I will have the strings (u', u and L.

I want to convert it back to normal strings from unicode object to utf8.

Here is the code:

programs = None
daysLimit = 14
start = datetime.datetime.now()
end = start + datetime.timedelta(days = daysLimit)
cur.execute('SELECT channel, title, start_date, stop_date FROM programs WHERE channel')
programs = cur.fetchall()

print(programs)
cur.close()

Here is the xbmc log:

03:49:03 T:3628  NOTICE: [(u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Middle -  The Ditch',
20140520170000L, 20140520173000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Goonies', 
20140520173000L, 20140520200000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides', 
20140520200000L, 20140520230000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The 700 Club', 
20140520230000L, 20140521000000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -  Day Damn One', 
20140521000000L, 20140521003000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -  Lucky Charm', 
20140521003000L, 20140521010000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -  The Ethnic Tip', 
20140521010000L, 20140521013000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -  The Young and the Restless', 
20140521013000L, 20140521020000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'Summer Sexy With T25!', 
20140521020000L, 20140521023000L), (u'101 ABC FAMILY ', u'Paid Programming', 
20140521023000L, 20140521030000L)

I want to ignore the strings (u', u and L so I want to make it look like this:

'101 ABC FAMILY ', 'The Middle -  The Ditch', 20140520170000, 20140520173000, 
'101 ABC FAMILY ', 'The Goonies', 20140520173000, 20140520200000, 
'101 ABC FAMILY ', 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides', 20140520200000, 20140520230000, 
'101 ABC FAMILY ', 'The 700 Club', 20140520230000, 20140521000000, 
'101 ABC FAMILY ', 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air -  Day Damn One', 20140521000000, 20140521003000,
and so on...

Can you please tell me how i can convert from unicode object to utf8 using python 2.6 version?

Solution

Your problem is that you are trying to display data, INSTEAD you are displaying python representation if this object.

So it contains meta-data like u, L, etc. If you want to display data the way you want, you should write a code to deal with it.

For example:

for row in cur.fetchall():
    print u"'{row[0]}', '{row[1]}', '{row[2]}', '{row[3]}', '{row[4]}'".format(row=row)

So it will look like

'1', '2', '3', '4'
'1', '2', '3', '4'
'1', '2', '3', '4'

But... as I can see, you make structure look like CSV-file(comma-separated values), do you? So, maybe, you should read about csv python module?