dict(FlatDict) fails when it contains complex unicode keys

[iliapolo]

There seem to be various issues when I put a complex unicode key inside the flatdict.

For example:

import flatcdict
d = flatdict.Flatdict()
d[u'key1:key2'] = 'value1'
dict(d)

KeyError: u'key1'

The same thing works if the key is a string object

import flatcdict
d = flatdict.Flatdict()
d['key1:key2'] = 'value1'
dict(d)

{'key1:key2': 'value1'}

I tracked the issue to this line where you force the key to be an 'str' object for it to have a delimiter.

Any special reason for that?

def _has_delimiter(self, key):
    """Checks to see if the key contains the delimiter.

    :rtype: bool

    """
    return isinstance(key, str) and self._delimiter in key

Its a problem for me because I populate the flatdict with objects returned by the json.loads function, which uses unicode for keys.

Environment

Python 2.7.14 on macOS HighSierra 10.13.3

I'll be happy to contribute and fix this issue once we discuss it.

Thanks 👍

[iliapolo]

Well, I just realised that in Python 3, unicode was renamed to str. So is it just a compatibility issue with Python 2.7?

[gmr]

@iliapolo probably, I'll take a look. Given the looming EOL for Python 2.7 (<2 years), I've been coding Python 3 first, and probably just missed this.

[gmr]

This should be resolved in v3.0.1