Python TypeError: string argument without an encoding - How to Fix

This error occurs when you try to use a string as an argument in a function or method that expects a byte-like object, without specifying an encoding for the string.

In Python 3, strings are Unicode objects, while bytes are binary data. When you pass a string to a function that expects bytes, you need to encode the string into bytes using a specific encoding before passing it as an argument.

For example, if you have a string 'hello' and you want to pass it to a function that expects bytes, you can encode it using the UTF-8 encoding like this:

s = 'hello'
b = s.encode('utf-8')

Then you can pass the bytes object b to the function.

If you don't specify an encoding when encoding a string to bytes, Python will use the default encoding for your system, which can cause issues if the function you are calling expects a different encoding.

To avoid this error, make sure to encode your strings to bytes using the correct encoding before passing them as arguments to functions that expect bytes.