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Python prints wrong encoding from MySQL database

I'm having issues with my Python when calling data from my MySQL database.

The database is set as UTF-8 and is containing, special letters such as 'Æ' and 'Ø'.

This is the code i use to call the Usernames from my Table

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import pymysql
db = pymysql.connect(
 host="localhost",
 user="root",
 password="XXXXXXXX",
 db="pythonconnectiontest", 
 charset="utf8"
)
cursor = db.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Username FROM Account")
numrows = cursor.rowcount 
for i in range (numrows):
 row = cursor.fetchone()
 print row

The expected output is:

ThisTextIsBrøken
Tæst 
Word

Actual output:

(u'ThisTextIsBr\xf8ken',)
(u'T\xe6st',)
(u'Word',)

I do get that the 'U' in front of the value, indicates that this is UNICODE and i probably just need to make python interpret the text correctly with encode() or decode().

I've spent many hours trying to figure this out, and the solution is probably very simple.

I hope someone can help me fix this.

Thanks for reading.

Answer*

The unicode strings it's outputting are perfectly fine. You can verify this by trying `print u'ThisTextIsBr\xf8ken'` in a python shell:

```python
➜ python2
Python 2.7.15 (default, Jan 10 2019, 23:20:52)
[GCC 8.2.1 20181127] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print u'ThisTextIsBr\xf8ken'
ThisTextIsBrøken
```

Your confusion is merely about how python represents unicode strings that are wrapped in another object. In this case your rows each represent a `tuple` of columns or more specifically a tuple containing a single unicode string. 

You can verify this by adjusting your code to print the actual unicode string rather than the tuple containing it. 

```python
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import pymysql
db = pymysql.connect(
 host="localhost",
 user="root",
 password="XXXXXXXX",
 db="pythonconnectiontest", 
 charset="utf8"
)
cursor = db.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Username FROM Account")

numrows = cursor.rowcount 
for i in range (numrows):
 row = cursor.fetchone()
 print row[0]
```

This should now output the expected strings.

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Python prints wrong encoding from MySQL database

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