TypeError: write() argument must be str, not bytes (Python)

TypeError: write() argument must be str, not bytes (Python) #

The Python "TypeError: write() argument must be str, not bytes" occurs when we try to write bytes to a file without opening the file in wb mode. To solve the error, open the file in wb mode to write bytes or decode the bytes object into a string.

Here is an example of how the error occurs.

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with open('example.txt', 'w') as my_file:
    # ⛔️ TypeError: write() argument must be str, not bytes
    my_file.write(b'hello world')

We opened the file in w mode and tried writing bytes which caused the error.

If you need to write bytes to a file, open in it wb (binary) mode rather than w (text) mode.

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# ✅ open file in wb mode
with open('example.txt', 'wb') as my_file:
    my_file.write(b'hello world')

We opened the file in wb (binary) mode to write bytes to it.

Note that you shouldn't specify the encoding keyword argument when you open a file in binary mode.

Alternatively, you can decode the bytes object into a string.

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with open('example.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as my_file:
    my_file.write(b'hello world'.decode('utf-8'))

We opened the JSON file in w (text) mode.

When a file is opened in text mode, we read and write strings from and to the file.

Those strings are encoded using a specific encoding (utf-8 in the example).

If you want to both read from and write to the file, use the r+ mode when opening it.

Note that you cannot specify encoding when opening a file in binary mode.

When a file is opened in binary mode, data is read and written as bytes objects.

The bytes.decode method returns a string decoded from the given bytes. The default encoding is utf-8.

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with open('example.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as my_file:
    my_file.write(b'hello world'.decode('utf-8'))

You can decode your bytes object to a string if you want to write strings to the file.

Conversely, the str.encode method returns an encoded version of the string as a bytes object. The default encoding is utf-8.

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with open('example.txt', 'wb') as my_file:
    my_file.write('hello world'.encode('utf-8'))

The example shows how to encode a string to a bytes object and write the bytes to a file.

Conclusion #

The Python "TypeError: write() argument must be str, not bytes" occurs when we try to write bytes to a file without opening the file in wb mode. To solve the error, open the file in wb mode to write bytes or decode the bytes object into a string.