Python requests and LanguageTool encoding error

Question

I am trying to post text data to a langaugetool server. My text includes trademark symbols and copyright symbols etc.

On my first attempt to just post the text like so:

response = requests.post(
    LANGUAGETOOL_URL,
    data=f"language=en-US&text={text}"
    )

I received an error from requests:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'latin-1' codec can't encode character '\u2122' in position 317: Body ('™') is not valid Latin-1. Use body.encode('utf-8') if you want to send it encoded in UTF-8.

Following this post I updated my request as follows:

response = requests.post(
    LANGUAGETOOL_URL,
    data=f"language=en-US&text={text}".encode('utf-8')
    )

Now requests does not error but the langaugetool server complains that it cannot decode the query:

2022-01-23 13:09:47.366 +0000 INFO  [lt-server-thread-6] [logError] rID:- org.languagetool.server.LanguageToolHttpHandler An error has occurred: 'Could not decode query. Query length: 3085 Request method: POST', sending HTTP code 400. Access from 172.17.0.1, HTTP user agent: python-requests/2.27.1, User agent param: null, Referrer: null, language: null, h: 1, r: 29, time: 0m: ALL, l: DEFAULT, Stacktrace follows:org.languagetool.server.BadRequestException: Could not decode query. Query length: 3085 Request method: POST
    at org.languagetool.server.LanguageToolHttpHandler.getParameterMap(LanguageToolHttpHandler.java:470)
    at org.languagetool.server.LanguageToolHttpHandler.parseQuery(LanguageToolHttpHandler.java:452)
    at org.languagetool.server.LanguageToolHttpHandler.getRequestQuery(LanguageToolHttpHandler.java:417)
    at org.languagetool.server.LanguageToolHttpHandler.handle(LanguageToolHttpHandler.java:152)
    at jdk.httpserver/com.sun.net.httpserver.Filter$Chain.doFilter(Filter.java:77)
    at jdk.httpserver/sun.net.httpserver.AuthFilter.doFilter(AuthFilter.java:82)
    at jdk.httpserver/com.sun.net.httpserver.Filter$Chain.doFilter(Filter.java:80)
    at jdk.httpserver/sun.net.httpserver.ServerImpl$Exchange$LinkHandler.handle(ServerImpl.java:725)
    at jdk.httpserver/com.sun.net.httpserver.Filter$Chain.doFilter(Filter.java:77)
    at jdk.httpserver/sun.net.httpserver.ServerImpl$Exchange.run(ServerImpl.java:694)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1128)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:628)
    at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:829)

I've checked all the languagetool docs and cannot find anything about encodings. I don't know at this stage whether the problem is requests, languagetool, or something else I'm doing wrong. Is it possible to post characters like a trademark symbol to languagetool and if so how?

Answer 1

Pass parameters as a dictionary. No need to manually encode anything:

import requests
import json

response = requests.post(
    'https://api.languagetoolplus.com/v2/check',
    data={'text':'check for mispelling™ © 2022', 'language':'en-US'}
    )

print(json.dumps(response.json(), ensure_ascii=False, indent=2))

Output:

{
  "software": {
    "name": "LanguageTool",
    "version": "5.7-SNAPSHOT",
    "buildDate": "2022-01-18 13:50:09 +0000",
    "apiVersion": 1,
    "premium": true,
    "premiumHint": "You might be missing errors only the Premium version can find. Contact us at support<at>languagetoolplus.com.",
    "status": ""
  },
  "warnings": {
    "incompleteResults": false
  },
  "language": {
    "name": "English (US)",
    "code": "en-US",
    "detectedLanguage": {
      "name": "English (US)",
      "code": "en-US",
      "confidence": 0.924
    }
  },
  "matches": [
    {
      "message": "This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter.",
      "shortMessage": "",
      "replacements": [
        {
          "value": "Check"
        }
      ],
      "offset": 0,
      "length": 5,
      "context": {
        "text": "check for mispelling™ © 2022",
        "offset": 0,
        "length": 5
      },
      "sentence": "check for mispelling™ © 2022",
      "type": {
        "typeName": "Other"
      },
      "rule": {
        "id": "UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START",
        "description": "Checks that a sentence starts with an uppercase letter",
        "issueType": "typographical",
        "category": {
          "id": "CASING",
          "name": "Capitalization"
        },
        "isPremium": false
      },
      "ignoreForIncompleteSentence": true,
      "contextForSureMatch": -1
    },
    {
      "message": "Possible spelling mistake found.",
      "shortMessage": "Spelling mistake",
      "replacements": [
        {
          "value": "misspelling"
        },
        {
          "value": "dispelling"
        },
        {
          "value": "mi spelling"
        }
      ],
      "offset": 10,
      "length": 10,
      "context": {
        "text": "check for mispelling™ © 2022",
        "offset": 10,
        "length": 10
      },
      "sentence": "check for mispelling™ © 2022",
      "type": {
        "typeName": "Other"
      },
      "rule": {
        "id": "MORFOLOGIK_RULE_EN_US",
        "description": "Possible spelling mistake",
        "issueType": "misspelling",
        "category": {
          "id": "TYPOS",
          "name": "Possible Typo"
        },
        "isPremium": false
      },
      "ignoreForIncompleteSentence": false,
      "contextForSureMatch": 0
    }
  ]
}