# Unicode in participant name appears wrong

**URL:** <https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935>\
**Category:** API and Webhooks\
**Created:** [November 2, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935 "2020-11-02T19:18:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![philmayes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/devforum.zoom.us/philmayes/32/18114_2.png) [@philmayes](https://devforum.zoom.us/u/philmayes)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935/1 "2020-11-02T19:18:04Z")

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I am using Webhook: participants: meeting: Participant/Host joined meeting

Unicode in a participant’s name is delivered wrongly in the JSON  
( **I think!** I am not an expert on unicode or JSON 🤔)  
Example: ë (e umlaut) appears as \udcc3\udcab  
json.loads does not like this.

Additional info:  
endpoint: [https://www.philmayes.com/cgi-bin/zoomevent.py](https://www.philmayes.com/cgi-bin/zoomevent.py)

The relevant cgi code:  
result = json.load(sys.stdin)  
print(“Content-type: application/json”)  
print()  
with open("…/zoompeople.txt", “a”) as write\_file:  
json.dump(result, write\_file)

It concatenates events to  
[https://www.philmayes.com/zoompeople.txt](https://www.philmayes.com/zoompeople.txt)  
which my desktop program can poll.

I cannot interpret \udcc3\udcab as utf16, utf32 or anything else. Thanks for any insights.

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**Author:** ![will.zoom](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/devforum.zoom.us/will.zoom/32/14417_2.png) [@will.zoom](https://devforum.zoom.us/u/will.zoom)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935/2 "2020-11-03T17:45:54Z")

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Hi @philmayes,

Thanks for joining our developer community!

In regards to how you’re seeing ë reflected in the webhook payload, I should note that our APIs do not support special characters and will not be able to accurately interpret them. We recommend you consider replacing or encoding any characters prior to interacting with them via API.

Thanks,  
Will

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**Author:** ![philmayes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/devforum.zoom.us/philmayes/32/18114_2.png) [@philmayes](https://devforum.zoom.us/u/philmayes)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935/3 "2020-11-03T19:30:43Z")

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Thanks, Will. I appreciate the prompt and specific answer.

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**Author:** ![will.zoom](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/devforum.zoom.us/will.zoom/32/14417_2.png) [@will.zoom](https://devforum.zoom.us/u/will.zoom)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 8:55pm UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935/4 "2020-11-04T20:55:37Z")

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Happy I could help clarify, Phil 🙂

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/zoomdeveloper/original/3X/6/1/614bdd549b610bbaa46ff934617683a02bdaa03c.png) [@system](https://devforum.zoom.us/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2020, 6:55am UTC](https://devforum.zoom.us/t/unicode-in-participant-name-appears-wrong/34935/5 "2020-12-05T06:55:41Z")

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Closed on December 5, 2020, 6:55am UTC

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