OWSLib getmap - how to encode layernames with non-ascii charaters?

Question

Whenever i think I understand encodings, I don't.. How do I correctly send a layername to the getmap function?

running python 2.7

from owslib.wms import WebMapService
wms_url = "http://ext-geodata.lansstyrelsen.se/arcgis/services/WMS/LST_WMS_riksintressen_3_5_st/mapserver/wmsserver?"

wms = WebMapService(wms_url)
my_layer = list(wms.contents)[1]

#output = u'ST Riksintresse K\xe4rnomr\xe5de  MB3kap5'

img = wms.getmap(layers=[my_layer],
                 styles=['default'],
                 srs='EPSG:3006',
                 bbox=(7000000,577000,7113000,690000),
                 size=(500, 500),
                 format='image/png',
                 transparent=True
                 )

out = open('testarea.png', 'wb')
out.write(img.read())
out.close()

When I run this, I get a UnicodeEncodeError. I understand I need to encode the layername correctly, but I fail to understand how.

l = my_layer.encode('utf-8')
img = wms.getmap(layers=[l], #etc etc...

yields

ServiceException: Parameter 'layers' contains unacceptable layer names.

How do I parse values from the contents list to layername correctly?

Answer 1

Try adding the following declaration at the top of your file:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

Then instead of l = my_layer.encode('utf-8') use:

l = u'my_layer.encode("utf-8")'