How to convert a string to utf-8 in Python

In Python 2

>>> plain_string = "Hi!"
>>> unicode_string = u"Hi!"
>>> type(plain_string), type(unicode_string)
(<type 'str'>, <type 'unicode'>)

^ This is the difference between a byte string (plain_string) and a unicode string.

>>> s = "Hello!"
>>> u = unicode(s, "utf-8")

^ Converting to unicode and specifying the encoding.

In Python 3

All strings are unicode. The unicode function does not exist anymore. See answer from @Noumenon

If the methods above don't work, you can also tell Python to ignore portions of a string that it can't convert to utf-8:

stringnamehere.decode('utf-8', 'ignore')

Might be a bit overkill, but when I work with ascii and unicode in same files, repeating decode can be a pain, this is what I use:

def make_unicode(inp):
    if type(inp) != unicode:
        inp =  inp.decode('utf-8')
    return inp

Adding the following line to the top of your .py file:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

allows you to encode strings directly in your script, like this:

utfstr = "ボールト"