Transform URL string into normal string in Python (%20 to space etc)

There are two encodings in play here. Your string has first been encoded as UTF-8, then each byte has been percent-encoded.

To get the original string back you need to first unquote it, and then decode it:

>>> import urllib
>>> s = '%CE%B1%CE%BB%20'
>>> result = urllib.unquote(s).decode('utf8')
>>> print result
αλ

Note that you need a Unicode enabled console in order to display the value (if you get an error with the print statement, try running it in IDLE).

python 3 answer

import urllib 
urllib.parse.unquote('/El%20Ni%C3%B1o/')

'/El Niño/'

source

For python 2:

>>> import urllib2
>>> print urllib2.unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20")
αλ

For python 3:

>>> from urllib.parse import unquote
>>> print(unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20"))
αλ

And here's code that works in all versions:

try:
    from urllib import unquote
except ImportError:
    from urllib.parse import unquote

print(unquote("%CE%B1%CE%BB%20"))

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