ndb.key.urlsafe() should return a string not bytes

[martin-green]

Expected Behavior

When calling ndb.key.urlsafe() you should get a string that can be concatenated with other strings.

Actual Behavior

Currently it return bytes so you need to add .decode() on every call to urlsafe()

Steps to Reproduce the Problem

1. On a ndb.Model derived class do: x.key.urlsafe() + ''
2. this will generate a runtime error: TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "bytes") to str

Specifications

• Version: 1.0.0
• Platform: Ubuntu 20.04 (wsl2)

[spiqueras]

Particularly annoying when serializing to JSON.

Will it remain a bytes object or will it be changed to str? If it's the former, I have some .decode()s to add.

[martin-green]

It is very annoying. Without this you would have to change all templates with string variables (almost all).

[martin-green]

@shreejad is this something that you could take? There is a PR: #72

[shreejad]

Hi, we had an internal discussion about this behavior, and we usually try to align with Cloud NDB. This would be a breaking change, so the barrier is high. I will discuss with the Cloud NDB team and post an update. For now, I don't see this change happening in the short term future.