Django DB insert incorrect string value

I am parsing a csv file (created in windows) and trying to populate a database table using a model i've created.

I am getting this error:

pl = PriceList.objects.create(code=row[0], description=row[1],.........
Incorrect string value: '\xD0h:NAT...' for column 'description' at row 1

My table and the description field use utf-8 and utf8_general_ci collation. The actual value i am trying to insert is this.

HOUSING:PS-187:1g\xd0h:NATURAL CO

I am not aware of any string processing i should do to ge开发者_如何学编程t over this error. I think i used a simple python script before to populate the database using conn.escape_string() and it worked (if that helps)

Thanks

I've had trouble with the CSV reader and unicode before as well. In my case using the following got me past the errors.

From http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html

The csv module doesn’t directly support reading and writing Unicode, ...

unicode_csv_reader() below is a generator that wraps csv.reader to handle Unicode CSV data (a list of Unicode strings). utf_8_encoder() is a generator that encodes the Unicode strings as UTF-8, one string (or row) at a time. The encoded strings are parsed by the CSV reader, and unicode_csv_reader() decodes the UTF-8-encoded cells back into Unicode:

import csv

def unicode_csv_reader(unicode_csv_data, dialect=csv.excel, **kwargs):
    # csv.py doesn't do Unicode; encode temporarily as UTF-8:
    csv_reader = csv.reader(utf_8_encoder(unicode_csv_data),
                            dialect=dialect, **kwargs)
    for row in csv_reader:
        # decode UTF-8 back to Unicode, cell by cell:
        yield [unicode(cell, 'utf-8') for cell in row]

def utf_8_encoder(unicode_csv_data):
    for line in unicode_csv_data:
        yield line.encode('utf-8')