BUG: Datareader index name shows unicode characters

Author: davidastephens

pandas_datareader/data.py

@@ -171,7 +171,15 @@ def _retry_read_url(url, retry_count, pause, name):
             # return 2 rows for the most recent business day
             if len(rs) > 2 and rs.index[-1] == rs.index[-2]:  # pragma: no cover
                 rs = rs[:-1]
-            return rs
+
+    #Get rid of unicode characters in index name.
+    try:
+        rs.index.name = rs.index.name.decode('unicode_escape').encode('ascii', 'ignore')
+    except AttributeError:
+        #Python 3 string has no decode method.
+        rs.index.name = rs.index.name.encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode()
+
+    return rs
 
     raise IOError("after %d tries, %s did not "
                   "return a 200 for url %r" % (retry_count, name, url))

pandas_datareader/tests/test_data.py

@@ -125,6 +125,12 @@ def test_dtypes(self):
         assert np.issubdtype(data.High.dtype, np.number)
         assert np.issubdtype(data.Volume.dtype, np.number)
 
+    def test_unicode_date(self):
+        #GH8967
+        data = web.get_data_google('F', start='JAN-01-10', end='JAN-27-13')
+        self.assertEquals(data.index.name, 'Date')
+
+
 class TestYahoo(tm.TestCase):
     @classmethod
     def setUpClass(cls):