UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe5 in position 4

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• I have checked the superset logs for python stacktraces and included it here as text if any
• I have reproduced the issue with at least the latest released version of superset
• I have checked the issue tracker for the same issue and I haven’t found one similar

Superset version

0.15.4

Expected results

change the metadata db from db2 to previous db1 can work

Actual results

after changing to db1, exists the encoding error

Steps to reproduce

1. add ?charset=utf8 in sqlalchemy_database_uri , and create database db1 character set utf8, use db1 as the metadata db, works
2. add ?charset=utf8 in sqlalchemy_database_uri , and create database db2 character set utf8, use db2 as the metadata db, works

3. change the sqlalchemy_database_uri from db2 to db1

4. view a slice or use SQL Lab, occur the encoding bug

python3.5 superset 0.15.4 mysql 5.7

File "/home/jiajie/project/superset/superset/superset/views.py", line 1588, in explore
    datasources = sorted(datasources, key=lambda ds: ds.full_name)
  File "/home/jiajie/project/superset/superset/superset/views.py", line 1588, in <lambda>
    datasources = sorted(datasources, key=lambda ds: ds.full_name)
  File "/home/jiajie/project/superset/superset/superset/models.py", line 1155, in full_name
    self.database, self.table_name, schema=self.schema)
......................
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/strategies.py", line 557, in _load_for_state
    return self._emit_lazyload(session, state, ident_key, passive)
  File "\<string\>", line 1, in \<lambda\>
    
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/strategies.py", line 603, in _emit_lazyload
    return loading.load_on_ident(q, ident_key)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/loading.py", line 223, in load_on_ident
    return q.one()
  .......
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/util/compat.py", line 186, in reraise
    raise value
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/loading.py", line 75, in instances
    rows = [proc(row) for row in fetch]
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/SQLAlchemy-1.1.5.dev0-py3.5-linux-x86_64.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/loading.py", line 75, in <listcomp>
    rows = [proc(row) for row in fetch]
 ....................
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/sqlalchemy_utils/types/encrypted.py", line 261, in process_result_value
    decrypted_value = self.engine.decrypt(value)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/sqlalchemy_utils/types/encrypted.py", line 89, in decrypt
    decrypted = decrypted.decode('utf-8')
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe5 in position 4: invalid continuation byte

[kkalyan]

this is a workaround you can use - convert the utf field to ascii using mysql expression in the edit dimension.

or include ?charset=utf8 in the SQLAlchemy URL

[jhult]

Here is how I was able to fix this: https://github.com/apache/superset/issues/8538#issuecomment-922061313