Is it possible to convert a large list of dictionaries into a string, and then back into a list in Python?

I'm using a MySQL database as part of a work project and I'm creating a python script for it. When extracting the data from the server (in this case, just 3 records) I use the 'pymysql' library. This library outputs the data in a list of dictionaries. the list is the whole output, with each dictionary inside the list holding each record.

output = [{'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 9, 'Sentence': ' Tell me a joke.'}, {'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 10, 'Sentence': '<FONT size="5"><B>\nHigh Workloads Hit Service Levels</FONT></B> \n<BR><FONT size="4"><FONT style="text-transform: capitalize;">\ncalls and average handle time</FONT> Up So Average Service 
Level Down To 92.2%.</FONT>\n\n'}, {'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 18, 'Sentence': '<BR><BR>Tell me a joke.'}]

It's a bit overwhelming to look at, but you'll see 3 'Sentence' items each followed by a string. What I want to do is convert the whole 'output' list into a string so I can remove a few characters. You'll see in the string belonging to the second 'Sentence' item that there's 2   characters towards the beginning of it. My thinking is to use changed_output.replace(' ', ' ', 2) to replace the characters, but I need to convert it into a string first. If anyone has a better way of replacing characters in a string I'd love to hear!

Here's what I've tried so far:

changed_output = str(output)
This one is weird. I used it to store the total number of 'Sentence' items into a variable like so:
number = changed_output.count('Sentence')
and it worked! It returned the number '3' which is correct. However I then tried to replace the characters using the python code I put above (the replace() function) and it doesn't replace those characters, but also doesn't return an error.

I also tried:

let = list(map(str, output))
changed_output = " ".join(let)

Which didn't replace the characters either. However this one removed the square brackets at the beginning and end of the list, essentially making it just a series of dictionaries.
I'm worried the quotation marks on <FONT size="5"> and <FONT size="4"> on the second 'Sentence' string
Does anyone know how to then convert it back into a list afterward?
might be tripping all of this. Does anyone know a solution?

What you intend is possible, but is the twice-removed wrong approach.

What you have there is an encoding error - your data was inserted in the database with a cp850 encoding (still used in Windows terminal "cmd" in some regions) - when properly converted back to bytes using "cp850" and decoding these bytes as "utf-8" you get the character with codepoint "\xa0" which is a non-breakable space - and the correct character in this case.

The correct fix would be change connection call in pymysql to use the proper encoding rather than cp850 or the default one - to utf-8. Then you can just leave the \xa0 character there: it will behave as appropriate in most contexts where text is presented.

If you want to do the wrong thing, you can convert your sql data to a json string, replace characters and deconvert it back.

If this is code inside a company, it will likely get people laughing or cursing you years from now, so be warned:

json.loads(json.dumps(output).replace(" ", "\x20"))

The major drawbak is that if at any point in your data there are other non-ascii characters, they won't be fixed - this just replaces this one sentence. Fixing the encoding will just make your data work.

And of course, another drawback is adding an enormous overhead on the processing of this data - if this is called in an API endpoint, for example, that could not be acceptable.

I would leave the data as a list of dictionaries as that makes it easier to work with in my opinion.

import datetime

output = [
    {'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 9, 'Sentence': ' Tell me a joke.'},
    {'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 10, 'Sentence': '<FONT size="5"><B>\nHigh Workloads Hit Service Levels</FONT></B> \n<BR><FONT size="4"><FONT style="text-transform: capitalize;">\ncalls and average handle time</FONT> Up So Average Service Level Down To 92.2%.</FONT>\n\n'},
    {'Time_Interval': datetime.datetime(2022, 11, 14, 0, 0), 'QueueID': 1018, 'TemplateID': 18, 'LineNum': 18, 'Sentence': '<BR><BR>Tell me a joke.'}
]

for row in output:
    row["Sentence"] = row["Sentence"].replace(" ", " ")
    print("=================")
    print(row["Sentence"])
    print("=================")

That should give you back:

=================
 Tell me a joke.
=================
=================
<FONT size="5"><B>
High Workloads Hit Service Levels</FONT></B>
<BR><FONT size="4"><FONT style="text-transform: capitalize;">
calls and average handle time</FONT> Up So Average Service Level Down To 92.2%.</FONT>


=================
=================
<BR><BR>Tell me a joke.
=================

Where output remains a list of dictionaries.