[Bug] Cookie related AttributeError under Python 2

Using http-prompt version 0.10.2 under Python 2.7, an AttributeError occurs as soon as a stored cookie is updated. The error doesn't seem to depend on the operating system. Tested on Windows 10 (native and with Cygwin) and with Arch Linux.

To reproduce:

Open any site that stores a cookie, e.g.: http-prompt https://www.google.com --follow
Make a GET request. If http-prompt is configured to automatically store cookies, then a cookie will be stored.
Repeat the GET request. An AttributeError occurs, displayed immediately after the response output.

This is the full error message:

    AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'items'

    Parse tree:
    <Node called "action" matching "get">  <-- *** We were here. ***
        <RegexNode called "_" matching "">
        <Node called "method" matching "get">
            <RegexNode matching "get">
        <RegexNode called "_" matching "">
        <Node matching "">
        <Node matching "">
        <Node matching "">
        <RegexNode called "_" matching "">

I managed to locate the precise spot where the error occurs. It is in the function update_cookies(base_value, cookies), which is in the module cli.py. The root cause seems to be that base_value needs to be a string (or None, initially). But under Python 2 the type of base_value is unicode. A solution that works for me is to insert the following two lines at the begin of that function:

        if type(base_value) == unicode:
            base_value = base_value.encode('utf8')

But this really is not much more than a hackish workaround. I'd like to have it properly fixed.

httpie / http-prompt

[Bug] Cookie related AttributeError under Python 2 #126