bytes, strings and urllib in Python3

Question

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this error. It's really basic, but it seems to say the opposite of what is true.

>>> x=b'hi'
>>> urllib.parse.unquote(x)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.7.0/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/urllib/parse.py", line 609, in unquote
    if '%' not in string:
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

I've passed the code a bytes object, I would hope that's bytes-like enough. urllib.parse.unquote() seems to only work with a str object.

So why would it generate an error saying it needs a bytes-like object?

ncica · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-11 13:34:42Z

1

I suggest to use urllib.parse.unquote_to_bytes, which encodes its string parameter to bytes if it receives a str object.

urllib.parse.unquote_to_bytes(x)

answered Feb 11, 2019 at 13:34

ncica

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1 Comment

mgjk Over a year ago

It's a very useful answer for the question I didn't know I had. Thanks for the tip. I can't mark this the answer as I was asking why the original TypeError is so cryptic.

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