2012/12/28 Karen Tracey <[email protected]> > On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 7:15 PM, Aymeric Augustin < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> 2) under Python 2.x __str__ is implemented as __unicode__ >> encoded to utf8. >> >> >> Yes, this is a legacy behavior that I strongly disagree with. It >> makes __str__ / __unicode__ handling for Model subclasses >> exceedingly sketchy.* The only reason why I didn't remove >> it is backwards compatibility. >> > > I'm curious what would you do instead, if backward-incompatibility were > not a concern?
In Python __unicode__ is __str__ + decode(sys.getdefaultencoding()): http://docs.python.org/2/reference/datamodel.html#object.__unicode__ Django reverses this behavior for Model subclasses and uses utf-8. I was first exposed to unicode handling in Python via Django and it took me a long time to discover that writing a __unicode__ method wasn't the canonical way to define an object's string representation. If we set aside backwards-compatibility, I would probably define a conventional, Django-specific method (eg. __display__) and derive __unicode__ and __str__ from there, according to Django's rules. Not using Python's default names makes it explicit that Django adds specific behavior. This vastly simplifies the definition of __str__ and __unicode__ in Python 2 and 3, and also avoids the semantic issue of __str__ returning unicode on Python 2 under @python_2_unicode_compatible. An alternative would be to provide an explicit way to change Python's behavior -- either a decorator or a class attribute. Though this isn't going to be very DRY. I haven't had issues with using utf-8 instead of the system charset, but Mikhail seems to suggest it can be a problem on Windows. Using the system charset, like Python does, might be less surprising. I don't have enough experience to tell. This won't be a problem for displaying objects in templates, because they're rendered in unicode. -- Aymeric. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
