force_text fails on class object with __unicode__ instance method

[drtyrsa]

In [10]: class A(object):
            def __unicode__(self):
                pass
   ....:     

In [11]: force_text(A)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-13-f9169705858c> in <module>()
----> 1 force_text(A)

.../django/utils/encoding.pyc in force_text(s, encoding, strings_only, errors)
     97         if not isinstance(s, six.string_types):
     98             if hasattr(s, '__unicode__'):
---> 99                 s = s.__unicode__()
    100             else:
    101                 if six.PY3:

TypeError: unbound method __unicode__() must be called with A instance as first argument (got nothing instead)

[drtyrsa]

​https://github.com/django/django/pull/1543

[drtyrsa]

​https://github.com/django/django/pull/1543

[drtyrsa]

https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/21019

[drtyrsa]

https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/21019

[Claude Paroz]

I think that calling force_text on the class itself is not a valid use case, unless you can demonstrate the opposite.

[drtyrsa]

What are valid use cases for smart_text then? As I understand it takes some object and returns its str (unicode) representation. Why can not this object be class itself?

I am using it to log the args of the function (some args can be models classes). Isn't it valid use case?

[Claude Paroz]

Currently, force_text/smart_text are meant to receive instances, not classes. I'd say that for your specific use case, you may test your argument before passing it to force_text, for example with the inspect.isclass method.