CSV File Not Supported Error

Question

Here is the code:

import bpy
import csv
import sys
csv_path = sys.argv[1]

file = open(csv_path)
reader = csv.reader(file)

header = next(reader) # 1st line is header

data = [ ]
for row in reader:
    name0 = row[0]
    name1 = row[0]
    pathout = 'test-videos/' + row[5] + '.m4v'
    s = bpy.context.scene
    f = s.objects['FirstName']
    f.data.body = name0
    f1 = s.objects['FirstName01']
    f1.data.body = name1+'?'
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = pathout
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

bpy.ops.wm.quit_blender()

And here is the error message:

Read blend: /PI-SAT/proj001/proj001-master.blend
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/PI-SAT/proj001/proj001master.py", line 9, in <module>
header = next(reader) # 1st line is header
File"/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.79/python/
lib/python3.5/codecs.py", line 321, in decode
(result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xef in position 23:
invalid continuation byte
Error: File format is not supported in file '/PI-SAT/proj001/test.csv'
... opened default scene instead; saving will write to
/PISAT/proj001/test.csv

I have read the file with a different script using the exact same code as in lines 2 - 15 and then printing the names and pathout. Running the script from the command line, not from within Blender, it works perfectly.

I have also run the part of the script within the for loop outside of the loop as a script from the command line and it works perfectly.

What am I missing about the CSV file? I created it in Excel on my Mac; is that a problem?

Answer 1

I think the file encoding is the problem. The blender python assumes 'UTF-8' and maybe the command line gets the encoding from the system.

Try to give the open method a encoding:

file = open(csv_path, encoding='latin-1')

I think 'latin-1' is correct for Mac, otherwise try 'iso-8859-1' or 'cp1252'.

Answer 2

I changed: file = open(csv_path) to: file = open(csv_path, 'rU', 'ignore')

This got rid of the: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xef in position 23: invalid continuation byte

Answer 3

I was testing on the Mac. I have moved the project to Google Cloud and the program runs properly on Google Compute Engine.