Errror decode() argument 1 must be string, not None when run textract.process

[frostchick]

I am having trouble when convertTotext with UTF-8 file...
text = textract.process("1.pdf", method='pdfminer')

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 150, in maybeDeferred
result = f(*args, **kw)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pydispatch/robustapply.py", line 55, in robustApply
return receiver(*arguments, **named)
File "td-net.py", line 178, in close
textData = convertToText(path,self.date) # convert pdf to text after download
File "td-net.py", line 239, in convertToText
text = textract.process("data/pdf/{1}/{0}.pdf".format(path,sDate), method='pdfminer')
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/textract/parsers/init.py", line 58, in process
return parser.process(filename, encoding, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/textract/parsers/utils.py", line 46, in process
unicode_string = self.decode(byte_string)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/textract/parsers/utils.py", line 65, in decode
return text.decode(result['encoding'])
TypeError: decode() argument 1 must be string, not None

[deanmalmgren]

That's odd. Looks like chardet could not determine an encoding for your file 1.pdf. Can you try running chardet 1.pdf to see what the output looks like?

I wonder if this is related to #133 somehow...

[JermellB]

This is exactly the problem I was having.

Uninstalled and reinstalled from github and it worked? Really befuddled now... Maybe a failed pip --upgrade?

[deanmalmgren]

I just pinned chardet to 2.1.1 to address #107. I think this will likely address your issue as well. Try pulling from the latest master on github to see if that fixes it. I'm going to close this, but feel free to reopen if it remains a problem.

[marija-stanojevic]

Hello,

I have this issue. I went back to 2.1.1 and now I got another error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'universaldetector' which happens because chardet 2.1.1 is too old. What should I do?