pickling error in python?

Question

I am getting this error, and I dont know what it means. How can I fix this problem?

my code looks like this, I\'ve used it before and it has worked:

Answer 1

This exact error occurred for me when I tried to unpickle (using pickle.loads) a string representation that I had stored in a database via django. Django changed the charactee representation of my string so that pickle.loads(mystring) threw me that error. When I added an explicit string conversion in, it was fine: pickle.loads( str(mystring) )

EDIT: looking at the comments on the original post, I think this is related to the unicode string issue mentioned. I put a normal string into the database, and django gives me back a unicode string that produces this error.