MySQL Bugs: #70543: Columns created as utf8_bin are returned as str instead of Unicode.

Bug #70543	Columns created as utf8_bin are returned as str instead of Unicode.
Submitted:	7 Oct 2013 16:08	Modified:	6 May 2022 16:54
Reporter:	Rui Pacheco	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	Connector / Python	Severity:	S2 (Serious)
Version:	1.0.12	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Assigned Account	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
I have a database (5.5.32-0ubuntu0.13.04.1) with all tables and columns defined as utf8_bin.

While trying to understand why MySQL was returning str instead of unicode I came across the following error in another driver: http://sourceforge.net/p/mysql-python/bugs/289/

Mistakenly thinking I was using that connector, I changed the column type from utf8_bin to utf8_general_ci and the unicode excaption UnicodeDecodeError disappeared.

How to repeat:
Create a database with columns as utf8_bin and try to retrieve data. type() shows it's str. Change the column types to utf8_general_ci. type() now shows it's unicode.

We checked this a while ago, but status was not changed to Verified.

Thanks for the report!

I believe this is Python 2 specific and doesn't happen in Python 3.

Unfortunately it appears this bug was lost/forgotten over time, I'm closing with a status update:

* 22 Mar 2017: Developer stated the bug cannot be reproduced, with Python 2 or 3
* Python 2 isn't supported in C/Py 8.0 anyways