Python String encode() Function

The String encode() method converts the string into bytes using a specified encoding scheme and returns it.

note

Since Python 3.0, strings are encoded to UTF-8 as default.

Syntax

my_string.encode(encoding, errors)

encode() Parameters

Python String encode() function parameters:

Parameter	Condition	Description
encoding	Optional	The encoding of the string like ascii, utf-8, windows-1250, windows-1252, etc.
error	Optional	Specifies what to do if the encoding fails (strict, replace, ignore, backslashreplace, namereplace, xmlcharrefreplace)

note

Notice that different error parameter has different effects:

• strict will raise an exception in case of an encoding error. This is the default value.
• replace will replace malformed data with a suitable replacement marker, such as ? or ufffd
• ignore will ignore malformed data and continue without further notice
• xmlcharrefreplace will replace the unencodable character with the appropriate XML character reference (for encoding only)
• backslashreplace will replace the unencodable character with backslashed escape sequences (for encoding only)
• namreplace will replace the unencodable character with its name

encode() Return Value

Python String encode() function returns a bytes object representing the encoded string.

Examples

Example 1: Encode to Default Utf-8 Encoding

For example, encoding a string to its default UTF-8 encoding.

The output shows the encoded version of the string, where special characters are represented by their byte sequences.

my_str = 'Das straße'
result = my_str.encode()
print(result) # Output: b'Das stra\xc3\x9fe'

output

b'Das stra\xc3\x9fe'

Example 2: Encoding with various error parameter

Let’s try to encode the German words Das straße, which translates to The street in English.

my_str = 'Das straße'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='backslashreplace')
print(result) # Output b'Das stra\\xdfe'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='ignore')
print(result) # Output b'Das strae'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='namereplace')
print(result) # Output b'Das stra\\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S}e'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='replace')
print(result) # Output b'Das stra?e'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='xmlcharrefreplace')
print(result) # Output b'Das straße'

result = my_str.encode(encoding='UTF-8', errors='strict')
print(result) # Output b'Das stra\xc3\x9fe

output

b'Das stra\\xdfe'
b'Das strae'
b'Das stra\\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S}e'
b'Das stra?e'
b'Das straße'
b'Das stra\xc3\x9fe'

Observation about String Encoding

Starting from Python 3.0, strings are stored as Unicode, meaning each character in a string is represented by a Unicode code point.

This allows for the efficient storage of strings by converting the sequence of Unicode code points into a set of bytes through a process known as encoding.

Python supports various encodings, with utf-8 being the most commonly used and the default encoding. The encode() method in Python enables the conversion of Unicode strings into any encoding supported by Python, with utf-8 being the default one.