How to Fix AttributeError: ‘str’ object has no attribute ‘decode’

The `AttributeError: str object has no attribute decode` error occurs in Python because you are trying to call the decode() method on a string object that does not have a decode() method.

AttributeError is an error in Python when you try to access or set an attribute (a variable or a method) that an object does not have. There are many versions of AttributeError, and in today’s post, we will discuss the `str object has no attribute decode` error.

Decoding is converting bytes object to a string, and encoding is converting a string to a bytes object.

str = "argentina"

print(str.decode())

Output

AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'

We get the AttributeError because the decode() method is available on bytes, not string objects. It converts a bytes object to a string object using a specified encoding.

How to fix AttributeError: str object has no attribute decode

To fix the `AttributeError: str object has no attribute decode` error, you need to ensure that the decode() method is on a bytes object, not on a string object.

str = b"argentina"

print(str.decode())

Output

argentina

And we solved this Attribute error by converting a string to a byte object and then using the decode() method on the byte object, which does not throw any error because the byte object has a decode() method.

Another approach to fix AttributeError

Use the encode() method to convert a string to bytes object and then use the decode() method on the bytes object to decode it and return the string.

The string encode() method is the opposite of bytes decode() and returns a byte representation of the Unicode string encoded in the requested encoding.

str = "argentina"

encoded = str.encode()

print(encoded)

Output

b'argentina'

And now, we have a bytes object with a decode() method we can use to convert the bytes object to a string.

str = "argentina"

encoded = str.encode()

decoded = encoded.decode()

print(decoded)

Output

argentina

I hope this article helps to clarify things and solve your error.

Thanks for reading!