Unicode and Django

This page is to make an impact analysis on the Django source to see what parts of it need what changes if we want to switch Django from using utf-8 bytestrings internally to fully use unicode strings internally.

Just a pin-down of things that spring to mind, all of them need more complete checking:

• database backends need to handle unicode vs. DATABASE_ENCODING translations
• special casing: the psycopg backend will need type handlers for string types (just as it already has type handlers for date/time types)
• the HTTPResponse sending machinery needs to do the unicode to DEFAULT_ENCODING translation
• internal usage of str() needs to be checked and supposedly changed over to unicode() usage
• debugging stuff needs to use repr() on strings, not str() (or use unicode() and let the HTTP response handling stuff handle the conversion - most debugging stuff is working with the response machinery anyway)
• mail sending functions need to do the right thing with the MIME type

Please either complete the above list or add headlines with more detailed discussions of the points above.