LookupError: Unknown Encoding

Why This Happens

Python uses specific encoding names that may differ from other systems. MySQL's utf8mb4 is Python's utf-8. Check the Python docs for supported names.

The Problem

data = b'Hello'
text = data.decode('utf8mb4')

The Fix

data = b'Hello'
text = data.decode('utf-8')

Step-by-Step Fix

1. 1

   Use standard names

   Use 'utf-8', 'ascii', 'latin-1', 'cp1252'.

2. 2

   Map from other systems

   Convert encoding names from databases to Python equivalents.

3. 3

   Check available encodings

   See Python's codecs module documentation.