Does UnicodeText even converts to unicode?

[Former user]

When you use the UnicodeText type it does not perform any convertions to unicode. As a result you can not save an object that was subclassed from unicode.

For example:

engine = create_engine('postgresql://localhost/bungeni-test', echo=True)

metadata = MetaData()
metadata.bind = engine

test_table = Table('test123', metadata,
    Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True),
    Column('name', UnicodeText),
)

class TestObject(object):
    pass

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

mapper(TestObject, test_table)
Session = sessionmaker()
Session.configure(bind=engine)
session = Session()

class UnicodeSubType(unicode):

    _bad_attribute = None

    def __new__(cls, ustr, bad_attribute=None):
        self = unicode.__new__(cls, ustr)
        self._bad_attribute = bad_attribute
        return self

ob = TestObject()
ob.name = UnicodeSubType("TestObject Text")
session.add(ob)
session.flush()

Will raise an error (ProgrammingError) can't adapt type 'UnicodeSubType'

Adding a test script to recreate.

[Mike Bayer]

The script runs fully for me against a PG database, psycopg2 2.2.4, as indicated below.

psycopg2 accepts Python unicode literals directly, so SQLAlchemy has no need to process incoming Python unicode binds when used with this backend (and note that a unicode subclass is still isinstance(x, unicode)). If a particular version here is not accepting your subclass, you can set convert_unicode='force' on the UnicodeText type, which will encode it to a string with utf-8 or whatever engine.encoding is set to, though its likely best to just upgrade your psycopg2.

classics-MacBook-Pro:sqlalchemy classic$ python test.py
2011-07-12 10:29:20,107 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine select version()
2011-07-12 10:29:20,107 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,109 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine select current_schema()
2011-07-12 10:29:20,109 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,111 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine select relname from pg_class c join pg_namespace n on n.oid=c.relnamespace where n.nspname=current_schema() and lower(relname)=%(name)s
2011-07-12 10:29:20,111 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'name': u'test123'}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,115 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine 
DROP TABLE test123
2011-07-12 10:29:20,115 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,118 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine COMMIT
2011-07-12 10:29:20,120 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine select relname from pg_class c join pg_namespace n on n.oid=c.relnamespace where n.nspname=current_schema() and lower(relname)=%(name)s
2011-07-12 10:29:20,120 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'name': u'test123'}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,122 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine 
CREATE TABLE test123 (
    id SERIAL NOT NULL, 
    name TEXT, 
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
)


2011-07-12 10:29:20,122 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,129 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine COMMIT
2011-07-12 10:29:20,131 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine BEGIN (implicit)
/Users/classic/dev/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/engine/default.py:460: SAWarning: Unicode type received non-unicode bind param value.
  processors[key](key)(compiled_params[key](key))
2011-07-12 10:29:20,132 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine INSERT INTO test123 (name) VALUES (%(name)s) RETURNING test123.id
2011-07-12 10:29:20,132 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'name': 'TestObject Text'}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,134 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine SELECT test123.id AS test123_id, test123.name AS test123_name 
FROM test123
2011-07-12 10:29:20,134 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
[object at 0x128b590>](<__main__.TestObject)
2011-07-12 10:29:20,135 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine SELECT test123.id AS test123_id, test123.name AS test123_name 
FROM test123 
 LIMIT %(param_1)s OFFSET %(param_2)s
2011-07-12 10:29:20,135 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'param_1': 1, 'param_2': 0}
<type 'str'>
2011-07-12 10:29:20,136 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine INSERT INTO test123 (name) VALUES (%(name)s) RETURNING test123.id
2011-07-12 10:29:20,136 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'name': u'TestObject Text'}
2011-07-12 10:29:20,137 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine SELECT test123.id AS test123_id, test123.name AS test123_name 
FROM test123
2011-07-12 10:29:20,137 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {}
[object at 0x13154f0>, <__main__.TestObject object at 0x128b670>](<__main__.TestObject)
2011-07-12 10:29:20,138 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine SELECT test123.id AS test123_id, test123.name AS test123_name 
FROM test123 
 LIMIT %(param_1)s OFFSET %(param_2)s
2011-07-12 10:29:20,138 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine {'param_1': 1, 'param_2': 0}
<type 'unicode'>
classics-MacBook-Pro:sqlalchemy classic$

[Former user]

yes the problem was in psycopg 2.2.0 (You have 2.4.2, because there is no 2.2.4 package.). It was fixed starting with 2.3.0