unicode_mayo is the mayo in your unicode sandwich. In your development environment, use it as a wrapper around unicode and byte strings to see if they're accidentally coming in to contact with byte strings. This can help catch unicode encode/decode errors before they happen in production!
unicode_mayo includes two classes: UnicodeSafetyWrapper and
BytestringSafetyWrapper. The former is meant to envelope unicode strings,
and warns when they come into contact with byte strings; the latter is meant
for byte strings, and warns when it comes into contact with unicode. Place
these in strategic places (likely in development environments only), like
gettext() or all strings from your database.
Installation via pip:
pip install unicode_mayo
Something like:
>>> import unicode_mayo
>>> wrapped = unicode_mayo.UnicodeSafetyWrapper(u'safety at last!')
>>> wrapped.encode('utf-8')
'safety at last!'
>>> wrapped + u' woohoo!'
u'safety at last! woohoo!'
>>> wrapped + 'evil bytestring'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/Users/eyalr/personal_work/unicode_mayo/src/unicode_mayo/__init__.py", line 55, in __add__
_fail_on_bytes(other)
File "/Users/eyalr/personal_work/unicode_mayo/src/unicode_mayo/__init__.py", line 90, in _fail_on_bytes
_fail_on_bytes_helper(other)
File "/Users/eyalr/personal_work/unicode_mayo/src/unicode_mayo/__init__.py", line 81, in _fail_on_bytes_helper
'Attempted string formatting without decoding utf-8'
TypeError: Attempted string formatting without decoding utf-8