Words.

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -22,6 +22,12 @@
   * Add `debug_logger` config option. This can be used to
     troubleshoot what VCR is doing.
   * Update WebMock to version (1.8.0) that supports Excon stubbing.
+  * Store the encoding with the request & response bodies in the
+    serialized cassette.
+  * Add new `preserve_exact_body_bytes` option that base64 encodes the
+    request or response body in order to preserve the bytes exactly.
+    Thanks to [Jeff Pollard](https://github.com/Fluxx) for help
+    designing this feature and for code reviewing it.
 
 ## Bug Fixes
 

README.md

@@ -133,6 +133,7 @@ Thanks also to the following people who have contributed patches or helpful sugg
 * [Carlos Kirkconnell](https://github.com/kirkconnell)
 * [Eric Allam](http://github.com/rubymaverick)
 * [Flaviu Simihaian](https://github.com/closedbracket)
+* [Jeff Pollard](https://github.com/Fluxx)
 * [Justin Smestad](https://github.com/jsmestad)
 * [Karl Baum](https://github.com/kbaum)
 * [Michael Lavrisha](https://github.com/vrish88)

Upgrade.md

@@ -220,3 +220,26 @@ the philosophy of VCR to record the entire sequence of HTTP interactions
 interaction can only be played back once unless you use the new
 `:allow_playback_repeats` option.
 
+## Preserve Exact Body Bytes
+
+Sometimes the request or response body of an HTTP interaction cannot
+be serialized and deserialized properly. Usually this is due to the body
+having invalid UTF-8 bytes. This new option configures VCR to base64
+encode the body in order to preserve the bytes exactly. It can either
+be configured globally with a block, or set on individual cassettes:
+
+``` ruby
+VCR.configure do |c|
+  c.preserve_exact_body_bytes do |http_message|
+    http_message.body.encoding.name == 'ASCII-8BIT' ||
+    !http_message.body.valid_encoding?
+  end
+end
+
+# or....
+
+VCR.use_cassette("my_cassette", :preserve_exact_body_bytes => true) do
+  # ...
+end
+```
+