python 3.x - Pandas to Oracle via SQL Alchemy: UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character -

using pandas 18.1...

i'm trying iterate through folder of csvs read each csv , send oracle database table. there non-ascii character lurking in 1 of many csvs (more reveling in anguish). keep getting error:

unicodeencodeerror: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xab' in position 8:  ordinal not in range(128) 

here's code:

import pandas pd import pandas.io.sql psql sqlalchemy import create_engine import cx_oracle cx  engine = create_engine('oracle+cx_oracle://schema:'+pwd+'@server:port/service_name' ,encoding='latin1')  name='table' path=r'path_to_folder' filelist = os.listdir(path)   file in filelist:     df = pd.read_csv(pathc+'\\'+file,encoding='latin1',index_col=0)     df=df.astype('unicode')     df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'])     df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['contract_effdt'],format='%yyyy-%mm-%dd')     df.to_sql(name, engine, if_exists = 'append') 

i've tried following:

1. encoding=utf-8 (in engine, if in read_csv, throws error)
2. adding ?encoding=utf8 after "service_name" in engine
3. using df=df.astype('unicode') (and not)

what want do: replace unreadable character else and, importantly, proceed sending data oracle.

note:

the data file i'm using cms.gov site. here's zip file example. i'm using "contracts_info" file.

thanks in advance!

i encoded string fields utf-8 individually , may have helped (a new error occurred, assume not related this):

dfc['organization type'] = dfc['organization type'].str.encode('utf-8') 

new error:

databaseerror: (cx_oracle.databaseerror) ora-00904: "contract_id": invalid identifier 

this because "contract_id" not set index. once did that, went (except being slower molasses, begins next adventure).