Safe unicode function(modified from web.py)

safeunicode.py

def safeunicode(obj, encoding='utf-8'):
    r"""s
    Converts any given object to unicode string.

        >>> safeunicode('hello')
        u'hello'
        >>> safeunicode(2)
        u'2'
        >>> safeunicode('\xe1\x88\xb4')
        u'\u1234'
    """
    t = type(obj)
    if t is unicode:
        return obj
    elif t is str:
        return obj.decode(encoding, 'ignore')
    elif t in [int, float, bool]:
        return unicode(obj)
    elif hasattr(obj, '__unicode__') or isinstance(obj, unicode):
        try:
            return unicode(obj)
        except Exception as e:
            return u""
    else:
        return str(obj).decode(encoding, 'ignore')
        
# print safeunicode(any_thing)