Introduction to UTF-8 Encoding

UTF-8, standing for Unicode Transformation Format – 8-bit, is a variable-width character encoding used for electronic communication. It encodes each character in one to four 8-bit bytes, making it compatible with ASCII and efficient for encoding characters from the Universal Character Set (UCS).

Essential UTF-8 APIs

1. encode Method

The encode method is used to encode a string to UTF-8 bytes.

  text = "Hello, UTF-8!"
  utf8_bytes = text.encode('utf-8')
  print(utf8_bytes) # Output: b'Hello, UTF-8!'

2. decode Method

The decode method is used to decode UTF-8 bytes back to a string.

  bytes_text = b'Hello, UTF-8!'
  decoded_text = bytes_text.decode('utf-8')
  print(decoded_text) # Output: Hello, UTF-8!

3. utf8len Method

This method calculates the length of a UTF-8 encoded string.

  def utf8len(string):
      return len(string.encode('utf-8'))
  
  text = "Hello, UTF-8!"
  print(utf8len(text)) # Output: 12

4. is_utf8 Method

Check if a byte sequence is valid UTF-8.

  def is_utf8(bytes_seq):
      try:
          bytes_seq.decode('utf-8')
          return True
      except UnicodeDecodeError:
          return False
  
  bytes_seq = b'Hello, UTF-8!'
  print(is_utf8(bytes_seq)) # Output: True

5. utf8_slice Method

Slice a UTF-8 string while keeping it well-formed.

  def utf8_slice(utf8_str, start, end):
      return utf8_str.encode('utf-8')[start:end].decode('utf-8', 'ignore')
  
  text = "Hello, UTF-8!"
  sliced_text = utf8_slice(text, 0, 5)
  print(sliced_text) # Output: Hello

Application Example

Here is an example of a simple web application that uses the above API methods to process UTF-8 encoded strings.

  from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
  
  app = Flask(__name__)
  
  @app.route('/encode', methods=['POST'])
  def encode_text():
      text = request.json.get('text', '')
      utf8_bytes = text.encode('utf-8')
      return jsonify({'utf8_bytes': utf8_bytes.decode('latin-1')}) # Latin-1 ensures byte representation
  
  @app.route('/decode', methods=['POST'])
  def decode_text():
      utf8_bytes = request.json.get('utf8_bytes', '').encode('latin-1')
      decoded_text = utf8_bytes.decode('utf-8')
      return jsonify({'decoded_text': decoded_text})
  
  @app.route('/validate', methods=['POST'])
  def validate_utf8():
      utf8_bytes = request.json.get('utf8_bytes', '').encode('latin-1')
      is_valid = is_utf8(utf8_bytes)
      return jsonify({'is_valid': is_valid})
  
  def is_utf8(bytes_seq):
      try:
          bytes_seq.decode('utf-8')
          return True
      except UnicodeDecodeError:
          return False
  
  if __name__ == '__main__':
      app.run(debug=True)

This simple Flask application provides endpoints for encoding, decoding, and validating UTF-8 strings.

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