OpenERP - UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte?

Question

I started getting this error when I try to select one field. It is weird, because it does not give this error for any other field in that class. I don't understand why it even uses 'ascii' codec here, when for others it does not. If I change label to consist only from ascii symbols, then error disappears, but that is not a solution.

my field is described like this:

    'partner_p_id':fields.many2one('res.partner','PASPĮ', domain=[('is_paspi','=',True)], track_visibility='onchange'),

It is tracked in _track:

_track = {
  'partner_p_id':{},
}

Encoding used in file:

# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

Exact error looks like this:

File "/openerp/server/openerp/addons/mail/mail_thread.py", line 366, in format_message
    message += '%s</div>' % change.get('new_value')
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc4 in position 34: ordinal not in range(128)
2014-03-06 13:21:14,042 13455 ERROR amb_test openerp.netsvc: ascii
<div> &nbsp; &nbsp; &bull; <b>PASPĮ</b>: 
34
35
ordinal not in range(128)

As I said my other fields are tracked the same and some have non ascii symbols in labels too, but it does not give such error for any other field.

Answer 1

You're mixing strings and unicodes. Given the error message I guess that this is what happens:

>>> message = u''
>>> message += '%s</div>' % ('<div> &nbsp; &nbsp; &bull; <b>PASPĮ</b>:')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc4 in position 34: ordinal not in range(128)

You can deal with it by making sure that in the change.get('new_value') call a unicode string is returned. You can do either this (notice the u sign before the string in parentheses):

message += '%s</div>' % (u'<div> &nbsp; &nbsp; &bull; <b>PASPĮ</b>:')

or this (notice the .decode('utf-8'):

message += '%s</div>' % ('<div> &nbsp; &nbsp; &bull; <b>PASPĮ</b>:'.decode('utf-8'))