Can non-standard unicode characters be included in device states?

I've tried various ways to include a degree symbol, including using the unicode equivalent \u00B0, but none of them seem to work?

A few examples:

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newTemp = "75°F"

newTemp = u"75\u00B0F"


I've always been able to include the degree symbol in Indigo string variables, but haven't figured it out in python / Indigo state variables?

[NOTE: Not only don't they work, but when I tried to include in Device.xml it caused the Indigo client to crash!!]

Jim

We'll take a look at it. Python 2.x isn't exactly great at Unicode support.

Actually it should work fine. I just tried it and didn't have any problem setting a device state to a unicode string.

The problem, which we need to document better, is that value as used in the XML here:

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<List>
   <Option value="fahrenKey">F, any XML encoded unicode string in here should be okay</Option>
   <Option value="celsiusKey">C, any XML encoded unicode string in here should be okay</Option>
</List>

is not really a device state value string. It is the unique value key to identify that particular list item. Instead of value we probably should have called it id, valueKey, or valueID.

So the values you use there needs to follow the same rules as id's:

• id's can contain letters, numbers, and other ASCII characters
• id's cannot start with a number or punctuation character
• id's cannot start with the letters xml (or XML, or Xml, etc)
• id's cannot contain spaces

Note, however, that the value is not the same as an actual device state values. Those can contain any unicode characters. Depending on what you are doing, when you calculate the device state string you will probably have to convert between the value in the XML (that is the valueKey) and the actual unicode string state you want to set.

Yeah - I finally sorted this out.

One caution - while non-standard characters seem to be OK to pass along to a state, e.g. using an Action to include "°F", python coding requires the use of unicode to enter non-standard characters, e.g. u"\u00B0" for the degree symbol.

Also, if a non-standard character is entered for a state value, it will show up properly in the Indigo UI, but if you try to access these values from a Terminal session, e.g. using the following to see elements of your device ...

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dev = indigo.devices[devId]
print dev

... you will generate an error : "UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb0' in position 33: ordinal not in range(128)"

Jim

yergeyj wrote:you will generate an error : "UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb0' in position 33: ordinal not in range(128)"

I'm not positive it will fix this particular problem, but inside the Terminal settings go to the Advanced panel and make sure the Character Encoding combox box near the bottom is set to Unicode (UTF-8).

The python print statement expects python str objects - everything else it tries to convert (like many built-ins). Unfortunately, many nonstandard chars don't get converted by the default encoder. Try this with the unicode string:

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print u.encode('ascii', 'ignore')

It'll ignore anything it can't encode properly and it won't throw. I use it in several plugins for a variety of reasons.

I'd like to add the degree symbol ° to a temperature variable whenever it changes.
Been searching around but am still unclear what the command may be.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Carl

What's changing the variable? That's what needs to be modified to add it - but not knowing what's changing it keeps me from answering the question...

I think I found it using the (ASCII character 188) command.

Thanks,

Carl

jay (support) wrote:What's changing the variable? That's what needs to be modified to add it - but not knowing what's changing it keeps me from answering the question...

Carl,

I think what Jay means is where in Indigo are you using the symbol. If it's just part of a variable, just enter the symbol (on a Mac it's just a option-shift-8 to place a degree symbol as text) into variable value.

The original reason for this post has to do with processing degree symbols, and related higher-level ASCII charters, using python, which is not as simple.

Hope that helps,
Jim

It was used just in a variable. I use VNC to do most of my programming from my iPad which
for some reason doesn't seem to allow me to enter the degree character.

Got it all working.

Thanks,

Carl