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Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:00:24 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: stmplib MIMEText charset weirdness
From: "Adam W." <AWasilenko@gmail.com>
Injection-Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:00:24 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:39929

Can someone explain to me why I can't set the charset after the fact and st=
ill have it work.

For example:
>>> text =3D MIMEText('=E2=9D=A4=C2=A5'.encode('utf-8'), 'html')
>>> text.set_charset('utf-8')
>>> text.as_string()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#53>", line 1, in <module>
    text.as_string()
  File "C:\Python32\lib\email\message.py", line 168, in as_string
    g.flatten(self, unixfrom=3Dunixfrom)
  File "C:\Python32\lib\email\generator.py", line 91, in flatten
    self._write(msg)
  File "C:\Python32\lib\email\generator.py", line 137, in _write
    self._dispatch(msg)
  File "C:\Python32\lib\email\generator.py", line 163, in _dispatch
    meth(msg)
  File "C:\Python32\lib\email\generator.py", line 192, in _handle_text
    raise TypeError('string payload expected: %s' % type(payload))
TypeError: string payload expected: <class 'bytes'>

As opposed to:
>>> text =3D MIMEText('=E2=9D=A4=C2=A5'.encode('utf-8'), 'html', 'utf-8')
>>> text.as_string()
'Content-Type: text/html; charset=3D"utf-8"\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Tra=
nsfer-Encoding: base64\n\n4p2kwqU=3D\n'


Side question:
>>> text =3D MIMEText('=E2=9D=A4=C2=A5', 'html')
>>> text.set_charset('utf-8')
>>> text.as_string()
'MIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\nContent-Type: text/htm=
l; charset=3D"utf-8"\n\n=E2=9D=A4=C2=A5'

Why is it now 8-bit encoding?