[python] python encoding utf-8

I am doing some scripts in python. I create a string that I save in a file. This string got lot of data, coming from the arborescence and filenames of a directory. According to convmv, all my arborescence is in UTF-8.

I want to keep everything in UTF-8 because I will save it in MySQL after. For now, in MySQL, which is in UTF-8, I got some problem with some characters (like é or è - I'am French).

I want that python always use string as UTF-8. I read some informations on the internet and i did like this.

My script begin with this :

 #!/usr/bin/python
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 def createIndex():
     import codecs
     toUtf8=codecs.getencoder('UTF8')
     #lot of operations & building indexSTR the string who matter
     findex=open('config/index/music_vibration_'+date+'.index','a')
     findex.write(codecs.BOM_UTF8)
     findex.write(toUtf8(indexSTR)) #this bugs!

And when I execute, here is the answer : UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 2171: ordinal not in range(128)

Edit: I see, in my file, the accent are nicely written. After creating this file, I read it and I write it into MySQL. But I dont understand why, but I got problem with encoding. My MySQL database is in utf8, or seems to be SQL query SHOW variables LIKE 'char%' returns me only utf8 or binary.

My function looks like this :

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

def saveIndex(index,date):
    import MySQLdb as mdb
    import codecs

    sql = mdb.connect('localhost','admin','*******','music_vibration')
    sql.charset="utf8"
    findex=open('config/index/'+index,'r')
    lines=findex.readlines()
    for line in lines:
        if line.find('#artiste') != -1:
            artiste=line.split('[:::]')
            artiste=artiste[1].replace('\n','')

            c=sql.cursor()
            c.execute('SELECT COUNT(id) AS nbr FROM artistes WHERE nom="'+artiste+'"')
            nbr=c.fetchone()
            if nbr[0]==0:
                c=sql.cursor()
                iArt+=1
                c.execute('INSERT INTO artistes(nom,status,path) VALUES("'+artiste+'",99,"'+artiste+'/")'.encode('utf8')

And artiste who are nicely displayed in the file writes bad into the BDD. What is the problem ?

Unfortunately, the string.encode() method is not always reliable. Check out this thread for more information: What is the fool proof way to convert some string (utf-8 or else) to a simple ASCII string in python