On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 12:33 AM, Georg Brandl <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
>
> Then let us do that.
>
> Senthil, what about urlencode of bytes values returning a str?
>

Sorry, the late response. I needed some time to look at this one and I
could only do it today.
We have been having str return value from urlencode, due to quote,
quote_plus methods which can take bytes/str but return str. (urlencode
is nothing but quote_plus which acts on two-element sequences like
name,value pairs.

The resultant str is certainly useful when we want to construct a URL
query string. But, when we want to do a POST via urlopen, we need
bytes data. So, I think best to advice through the documentation that,
urlencoded value must be converted to bytes if it is to be used for
POST'ing using urlopen.

(Well, I also think that urllencode could be modified to the effect
that if the key,value pairs are bytes, return the bytes output.
Technically, this would involve overriding some behavior of
quote/quote_plus and the return value will suitable only for POST data
and not for url query construction. I would rather choose to discuss
this before settling on the behavior and I remember that quote's
behavior did take a significant amount discussion).

So, for this issue. A patch would a prevent str data from being posted
with ValueError explaining the reason that bytes and required and a
documentation update in the urlencode method which would inform the
users that the output be converted to bytes before it is POSTed,

Shall we go ahead with this, Georg?  I shall post a patch immediately.