CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondjangostringunicode
Jonathan Livni
Jonathan Livni

Reputation: 107102

fetch django model string fields as str instead of unicode

django fetches CharField fields as unicode, whereas sometimes str is required. It is inefficient and tedious to write code that loops over the fields, checks the type and if it is unicode casts it to str.

Is there already a feature that can handle it?
If not what would be the most elegant way to handle this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 604

Answers (1)

knbk
knbk

Reputation: 53679

You can subclass the models.CharField class and override the to_python method:

from django.utils.encoding import smart_str
from django.db.models import CharField

class ByteStringField(CharField):
    def to_python(self, value):
        if isinstance(value, str) or value is None:
            return value
        return smart_str(value)

smart_str is the equivalent for bytestrings of the smart_unicode function normally used in CharFields.

EDIT: As Jonathan says, if you're using South, remember to extend south's introspection rules.

Upvotes: 1

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