Python encode() doesn't work?

Question

I've tried encode() and it doesn't work. I keep getting TypeError: must be str, not bytes because normally I'd get TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'.

ip = socket.gethostbyname("google.com")
port = 80
robot = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
payload = "Hello world"
try:
    robot.connect((ip, port)))
    robot.send('GET '+payload.encode()+' HTTP/1.1\n\n')
except socket.error:
    print("connection lost")
robot.close()

I dont understand what I did wrong?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 17 '18 at 00:24

If you look at the documentation for socket.send, you can see that the first argument is bytes, not a string. You encode a string with a particular encoding to turn it into bytes, and you decode bytes with a particular encoding to turn them into a string:

robot.send(b'GET ' + payload.encode() + b' HTTP/1.1\n\n')

str.encode and str.decode default to utf-8.

Python encode() doesn't work?

1 Answers1