UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 2810: character maps to <undefined>

[levalencia]

System Info

I have a CSV file with profile information, names, birthdate, gender, favoritemovies, etc, etc.

I need to create a chatbot with this and I am trying to use the CSVLoader like this:

    loader = CSVLoader(file_path="profiles.csv", source_column="IdentityId")
    doc = loader.load()
    text_splitter = CharacterTextSplitter(chunk_size=5000, chunk_overlap=0)
    #docs = text_splitter.split_documents(documents)
    embed = OpenAIEmbeddings(deployment=OPENAI_EMBEDDING_DEPLOYMENT_NAME, model=OPENAI_EMBEDDING_MODEL_NAME, chunk_size=1)
   
    docsearch = Pinecone.from_documents(doc, embed, index_name="cubigo")

    llm = AzureChatOpenAI(
        openai_api_base=OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_ENDPOINT,
        openai_api_version=OPENAI_API_VERSION ,
        deployment_name=OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME,
        openai_api_key=OPENAI_API_KEY,
        openai_api_type = OPENAI_API_TYPE ,
        model_name=OPENAI_MODEL_NAME,
        temperature=0)    
    user_input = get_text()   
    docs = docsearch.similarity_search(user_input)
    st.write(docs)

However I get this error:

The file looks like this:

IdentityId,FirstName,LastName,Gender,Birthdate,Birthplace,Hometown,content
1A9DCDD4-DD7E-4235-BA0C-00CB0EC7FF4F,FirstName0002783,LastName0002783,Unknown,Not specified,Not Specified,Not Specified,"First Name: FirstName0002783. Last Name: LastName0002783. Role Name: Resident IL. Gender: Unknown. Phone number: Not specified. Cell Phone number: Not specified. Address2: 213. Birth Date: Not specified. Owned Technologies: Not specified. More About Me: Not Specified. Birth place: Not Specified. Home town:Not Specified. Education: Not Specified. College Name: Not Specified. Past Occupations: Not Specified. Past Interests:Not specified. Veteran: Not Specified. Name of spouse: Not specified, Religious Preferences: Not specified. Spoken Languages: Not specified. Active Live Description: Not specified. Retired Live Description: Not specified. Accomplishments: Not specified. Marital Status: Not specified. Anniversary Date: Not specified. Your typical day: Not specified. Talents and Hobbies:  Not specified. Interest categories: Not specified. Other Interest Categories: Not specified. Favorite Actor: Not specified. Favorite Actress: Not specified. Favorite Animal: Not specified. Favorite Author: Not specified. Favorite Band Musical Artist: Not specified. Favorite Book: Not specified. Favorite Climate: Not specified. Favorite Color: Not specified. Favorite Dance: Not specified. Favorite Dessert: Not specified. Favorite Drink: Not specified. Favorite Food: Not specified. Favorite Fruit: Not specified. Favorite Future Travel Destination: Not specified. Favorite Movie: Not specified. Favorite Past Travel Destination: Not specified. Favorite Game: Not specified. Favorite Season Of The Year: Not specified. Favorite Song: Not specified. Favorite Sport: Not specified. Favorite Sports Team: Not specified. Favorite Tv Show: Not specified. Favorite Vegetable: Not specified. FavoritePastTravelDestination: Not specified"
D50E05C9-16EB-4554-808C-01EEDE433076,FirstName0003583,LastName0003583,Unknown,Not specified,Not Specified,Not Specified,"First Name: FirstName0003583. Last Name: LastName0003583. Role Name: Resident AL. Gender: Unknown. Phone number: Not specified. Cell Phone number: Not specified. Address2: Not specified. Birth Date: Not specified. Owned Technologies: Not specified. More About Me: Not Specified. Birth place: Not Specified. Home town:Not Specified. Education: Not Specified. College Name: Not Specified. Past Occupations: Not Specified. Past Interests:Not specified. Veteran: Not Specified. Name of spouse: Not specified, Religious Preferences: Not specified. Spoken Languages: Not specified. Active Live Description: Not specified. Retired Live Description: Not specified. Accomplishments: Not specified. Marital Status: Not specified. Anniversary Date: Not specified. Your typical day: Not specified. Talents and Hobbies:  Not specified. Interest categories: Not specified. Other Interest Categories: Not specified. Favorite Actor: Not specified. Favorite Actress: Not specified. Favorite Animal: Not specified. Favorite Author: Not specified. Favorite Band Musical Artist: Not specified. Favorite Book: Not specified. Favorite Climate: Not specified. Favorite Color: Not specified. Favorite Dance: Not specified. Favorite Dessert: Not specified. Favorite Drink: Not specified. Favorite Food: Not specified. Favorite Fruit: Not specified. Favorite Future Travel Destination: Not specified. Favorite Movie: Not specified. Favorite Past Travel Destination: Not specified. Favorite Game: Not specified. Favorite Season Of The Year: Not specified. Favorite Song: Not specified. Favorite Sport: Not specified. Favorite Sports Team: Not specified. Favorite Tv Show: Not specified. Favorite Vegetable: Not specified. FavoritePastTravelDestination: Not specified"

Who can help?

No response

Information

• [ ] The official example notebooks/scripts
• [ ] My own modified scripts

Related Components

• [ ] LLMs/Chat Models
• [ ] Embedding Models
• [ ] Prompts / Prompt Templates / Prompt Selectors
• [ ] Output Parsers
• [X] Document Loaders
• [ ] Vector Stores / Retrievers
• [ ] Memory
• [ ] Agents / Agent Executors
• [ ] Tools / Toolkits
• [ ] Chains
• [ ] Callbacks/Tracing
• [ ] Async

Reproduction

USe this code:

    loader = CSVLoader(file_path="profiles.csv", source_column="IdentityId")
    doc = loader.load()
    text_splitter = CharacterTextSplitter(chunk_size=5000, chunk_overlap=0)
    #docs = text_splitter.split_documents(documents)
    embed = OpenAIEmbeddings(deployment=OPENAI_EMBEDDING_DEPLOYMENT_NAME, model=OPENAI_EMBEDDING_MODEL_NAME, chunk_size=1)
   
    docsearch = Pinecone.from_documents(doc, embed, index_name="x")

    llm = AzureChatOpenAI(
        openai_api_base=OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_ENDPOINT,
        openai_api_version=OPENAI_API_VERSION ,
        deployment_name=OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME,
        openai_api_key=OPENAI_API_KEY,
        openai_api_type = OPENAI_API_TYPE ,
        model_name=OPENAI_MODEL_NAME,
        temperature=0)    
    user_input = get_text()   
    docs = docsearch.similarity_search(user_input)
    st.write(docs)

error is here:

File "C:\Users\xx\anaconda3\envs\xx\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Exception: UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 2810: character maps to <undefined>

Expected behavior

load the csv without any issue?

[dosubot[bot]]

Answer generated by a 🤖

Answer

I understand that you're encountering a UnicodeDecodeError when trying to load a CSV file using the CSVLoader in LangChain. This error typically occurs when the file contains characters that aren't recognized by the default encoding, which in this case is 'utf-8'.

To address this issue, you can specify the encoding when initializing the CSVLoader. If you're unsure of the file's encoding, you can try using 'latin1', 'iso-8859-1', or 'cp1252'. Here's how you can adjust your code:

loader = CSVLoader(file_path="profiles.csv", source_column="IdentityId", encoding='latin1')
doc = loader.load()

Please replace 'latin1' with the correct encoding if it's different. If you're unsure of the correct encoding, you may need to experiment with a few different ones to see which one works.

This solution assumes that the error is due to an encoding issue. However, if the error persists after trying different encodings, there might be other factors at play.

If you believe this is a bug that could impact other users, feel free to make a pull request with a proposed fix. We appreciate contributions from our user community.

Also, if you're using an older version of LangChain, I would recommend upgrading to the latest version as this might resolve your issue if it was due to a bug that has since been fixed.

Sources

• docs/snippets/modules/data_connection/document_loaders/how_to/file_directory.mdx
• langchain/document_loaders/csv_loader.py

---

This response is meant to be useful, save you time, and share context. It is not meant to be a precise solution, but rather a starting point for your own research.

Help me be more useful! Please leave a 👍 if this is helpful and 👎 if it is irrelevant.

[AlxndrMlk]

I experience the same issue.

Pandas reads the file with defualt settings (utf-8), but CSVLoader fails wih UnicodeDecodeError

[levalencia]

not sure why the bot suggests encoding latin, did that fixed it for you @AlxndrMlk

[AlxndrMlk]

Hi @levalencia

I changed the encoding to 8859 and it worked.

That said, I am still not sure what caused the error as pandas opens the same file without issues.

I also saved the file from pandas explicitly specifying utf-8 as encoding and tried to re-read with the CSVLoader, but it did not solve the issue.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi, @levalencia! I'm Dosu, and I'm helping the LangChain team manage their backlog. I wanted to let you know that we are marking this issue as stale.

From what I understand, you encountered a UnicodeDecodeError when trying to load a CSV file using the CSVLoader. It seems that specifying the encoding as 'latin1' or '8859' resolved the issue for other users. However, it's unclear what caused the original problem.

Before we close this issue, we wanted to check if it is still relevant to the latest version of the LangChain repository. If it is, please let us know by commenting on this issue. Otherwise, feel free to close the issue yourself or it will be automatically closed in 7 days.

Thank you for your understanding!