UnicodeEncodeError in QGIS when setting a path

Question

When I'm trying to batch reproject a bunch of files using GDAL warp (reproject) from processing module in QGIS (2.14) I'm getting UnicodeEncodeError:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 4-8: ordinal not in range(128) 
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:/PROGRA~1/QGISES~1/apps/qgis/./python/plugins\processing\gui\BatchOutputSelectionPanel.py", line 83, in showSelectionDialog
 print filename, selectedFileFilter
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 4-8: ordinal not in range(128)

This is a very common error when working with Russian/Unicode paths (and/or Russian locale of QGIS) and is not specific to this particular module but rather to using any Unicode paths within a workflow.

Is there any way to overcome this error?

• Joseph: Perhaps this post might help: How can I avoid UnicodeEncodeError when using geoprocessing tools in QGIS?

Answer 1

As @Joseph suggested, the problem was due to the bug in the code of the processing sub-module BatchOutputSelectionPanel.py (maybe it exists in other modules, though I have not tested it yet).

As Traceback suggests, the UnicodeEncodeError comes from line 83: print filename, selectedFileFilter. I checked the source code and have found out that variable filename has full unicode support, but selectedFileFilter, which stores input file mask and a mask description, has not.

e.g. in Russian locale of QGIS in this case selectedFileFilter stores text Tif-файлы (*.tif) and the module then tries to encode it as ascii, which causes this error.

The workaround was to switch QGIS locale to English.