Rails Import CSV Error: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8 – SEO

I’m getting the error invalid byte sequence in UTF-8 when trying to import a CSV file in my Rails application. Everything was working fine until I added a gsub method to compare one of the CSV columns to a field in my database.

When I import a CSV file, I want to check whether the address for each row is included in an array of different addresses for a specific client. I have a client model with an alt_addresses property which contains a few different possible formats for the client’s address.

I then have a citation model (if you’re familiar with local SEO you’ll know this term). The citation model doesn’t have an address field, but it has a nap_correct? field (NAP stands for “Name”, “Address”, “Phone Number”). If the name, address, and phone number for a CSV row is equivalent to what I have in the database for that client, the nap_correct? field for that citation gets set to “correct”.

Here’s what the import method looks like in my citation model:

def self.import(file, client_id)
  @client = Client.find(client_id)
  CSV.foreach(file.path, headers: true) do |row|
    @row = row.to_hash
    @citation = Citation.new
    if @row["Address"]
      if @client.alt_addresses.include?(@row["Address"].to_s.downcase.gsub(/W+/, '')) && self.phone == @row["Phone Number"].gsub(/[^0-9]/, '')
        @citation.nap_correct = true
      end
    end
    @citation.name = @row["Domain"]
    @citation.listing_url = @row["Citation Link"]
    @citation.save
  end
end

And then here’s what the alt_addresses property looks like in my client model:

def alt_addresses
  address = self.address.downcase.gsub(/W+/, '')
  address_with_zip = (self.address + self.zip_code).downcase.gsub(/W+/, '')
  return [address, address_with_zip]
end

I’m using gsub to reformat the address column in the CSV as well as the field in my client database table so I can compare the two values. This is where the problem comes in. As soon as I added the gsub method I started getting the invalid byte-sequence error.

I’m using Ruby 2.1.3. I’ve noticed a lot of the similar errors I find searching Stack Overflow are related to an older version of Ruby.