Monkey patch xml.etree.ElementTree to always return unicode

resources/lib/defused_etree.py

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
+"""
+xml.etree.ElementTree tries to encode with text.encode('ascii') - which is
+just plain BS. This etree will always return unicode, not string
+"""
+from __future__ import absolute_import, division, unicode_literals
+# Originally tried faster cElementTree, but does NOT work reliably with Kodi
+from defusedxml.ElementTree import DefusedXMLParser, _generate_etree_functions
+
+from xml.etree.ElementTree import TreeBuilder as _TreeBuilder
+from xml.etree.ElementTree import parse as _parse
+from xml.etree.ElementTree import iterparse as _iterparse
+from xml.etree.ElementTree import tostring
+
+
+class UnicodeXMLParser(DefusedXMLParser):
+    """
+    PKC Hack to ensure we're always receiving unicode, not str
+    """
+    @staticmethod
+    def _fixtext(text):
+        """
+        Do NOT try to convert every entry to str with entry.encode('ascii')!
+        """
+        return text
+
+
+# aliases
+XMLTreeBuilder = XMLParse = UnicodeXMLParser
+
+parse, iterparse, fromstring = _generate_etree_functions(UnicodeXMLParser,
+                                                         _TreeBuilder, _parse,
+                                                         _iterparse)
+XML = fromstring
+
+
+__all__ = ['XML', 'XMLParse', 'XMLTreeBuilder', 'fromstring', 'iterparse',
+           'parse', 'tostring']

resources/lib/utils.py

@@ -12,7 +12,8 @@ from threading import Lock
 import urllib
 # Originally tried faster cElementTree, but does NOT work reliably with Kodi
 import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
-import defusedxml.ElementTree as defused_etree  # etree parse unsafe
+# etree parse unsafe; make sure we're always receiving unicode
+from . import defused_etree
 from xml.etree.ElementTree import ParseError
 from functools import wraps
 import hashlib