Setting character encoding for all layers at once using PyQGIS

Question

I have to set the character encoding for all layers from system to UTF-8.

Is there a way to change this in all loaded layers at once?

I'm using QGIS 2.8.1 on Windows 7.

Answer 1

You can use the following, which should set the encoding of your loaded layers to UTF-8:

PyQGIS 3:

for layer in QgsProject.instance().mapLayers().values():
    layer.setProviderEncoding(u'UTF-8')
    layer.dataProvider().setEncoding(u'UTF-8')
    print (layer.name(), layer.dataProvider().encoding())

PyQGIS 2:

for layer in QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance().mapLayers().values():
    layer.setProviderEncoding(u'UTF-8')
    layer.dataProvider().setEncoding(u'UTF-8')
    print layer.name(), layer.dataProvider().encoding()   #Optional check: prints layer name and its encoding source

Remember to save your project file (.qgs) afterwards.

As suggested by @meles, you can input the above code into the Python Console (Plugins > Python Console; Extensions > Python Console; (Ctrl+Alt+T)).