[PATCH] Repoze.what cannot handle non-ascii error messages

[chrisz]

Steps to reproduce the problem:

• Quickstart a TG2 project with authorization
• Setup the database and run the project with --reload
• Surf to  http://localhost:8080/manage_permission_only
• You get an error message "Only for managers"
• In the require decorator of the controllers.root.manage_permission_only method, set msg=l_(u'Nur für Mänätscher'), i.e. put some non-ascii chars in the error message (make sure you have an encoding hint at the top of the file).
• Surf to  http://localhost:8080/manage_permission_only
• You get an UnicodeEncodeError

Cause: The error message cannot be converted to unicode

Solution: In repoze.what.predicates, add the following method to the PredicateError class:

class PredicateError(Exception):

    def __unicode__(self):
        return unicode(self.message)

[Gustavo]

We were already aware of this issue, but it's a bug in Python itself (in its logging package). It's fixed in Python 2.6.

I'll check this to see if it's a valid workaround. Thanks.

[Gustavo]

Unfortunately, Exception.message is available as of Py 2.5 (although deprecated in Py 2.6), so Py 2.4 users will get AttributeError exceptions even if the message contains ASCII chars only. :(

Thanks anyway! ;-)

[chrisz]

I'm reopening this because I consider it very important - my users really want localized error messages.

So how about the following patch that should work with Py 2.4-2.6 (it does nothing with Py 2.6):

class PredicateError(Exception):
    if not hasattr(Exception, '__unicode__'):
        def __unicode__(self):
            return unicode(self.args and self.args[0] or '')

[Gustavo]

Replying to chrisz:

I'm reopening this because I consider it very important - my users really want localized error messages.

Localized error messages are supported, the only problem is when they are logged in Py < 2.6.

So how about the following patch that should work with Py 2.4-2.6 (it does nothing with Py 2.6):

class PredicateError(Exception):
    if not hasattr(Exception, '__unicode__'):
        def __unicode__(self):
            return unicode(self.args and self.args[0] or '')

Yes, it does seem to work. I'll try to verify it and apply it today.

[chrisz]

Replying to Gustavo:

Localized error messages are supported, the only problem is when they are logged in Py < 2.6.

But by default they *are* logged in the TG2 development environment.

And besides the logging, there is also another problem with the ActionProtector class in repoze.what.pylons which contains the following code

        except NotAuthorizedError, e:
            reason = unicode(e)

Without the patch, this fails for Py < 2.6.

[Gustavo]

Thank you very much for your help, Christoph!

It worked and the fix is now on repoze.what 1.0.5.

Enjoy! ;-)

[chrisz]

Thanks for the quick fix :) This is why I like open source.