Cannot use dict with unicode keys as keyword arguments

[complex]

BPO	1712419
Nosy	@malemburg, @birkenfeld, @rhettinger

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2007-05-19.18:14:27.000>
created_at = <Date 2007-05-03.22:49:23.000>
labels = ['type-feature', 'expert-unicode']
title = 'Cannot use dict with unicode keys as keyword arguments'
updated_at = <Date 2007-05-19.18:14:27.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/complex'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2007-05-19.18:14:27.000>
actor = 'georg.brandl'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Unicode']
creation = <Date 2007-05-03.22:49:23.000>
creator = 'complex'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 1712419
keywords = []
message_count = 5.0
messages = ['55096', '55097', '55098', '55099', '55100']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['lemburg', 'georg.brandl', 'rhettinger', 'complex']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'wont fix'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue1712419'
versions = []

[complex]

Unicode strings cannot be used as keys in dictionaries passed as keyword argument to a function. For example:

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Apr 18 2007, 08:51:08) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def fn(**kw):
...     print repr(kw)
...
>>> fn(**{u'x':1})
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: fn() keywords must be strings
>>>

Unicode strings should be converted to str automatically using the site specific default encoding or something similar solution.

This bug caused problems when decoding dictionaries from data formats such as XML or JSON. Usually unicode strings are returned from such modules, such as simplejson. Manual encoding from unicode to str causes performance loss if this cannot be done by Python automatically.

[birkenfeld]

In any case, this is a feature request.

[malemburg]

Python (currently) does not allow non-ASCII identifiers, so it's not surprising that Unicode parameter names don't work.

It's also a really bad idea to pass data from an AJAX XML or JSON request directly to a function without doing at least some post-processing of the data in order to prevent DOS attacks, code injection, etc.

dict((str(key), value) for key, value in kw.iteritems()) is all that's needed for the above.

BTW, I don't think those few micro-seconds really matter in the face of XML or JSON decoding, network latency, etc. ;-)

[rhettinger]

Recommend closing this as not-a-bug.

[birkenfeld]

Yeah, should be uncontroversial.