PyMySQL Force Unicode Cursors (because sometimes use_unicode=True is not enough)

force_unicode_cursors.py

from pymysql.cursors import Cursor, DictCursor


class ForceUnicodeMixin():

    def _ensure_unicode_value(self, value):
        if isinstance(value, bytes) or isinstance(value, bytearray):
            return value.decode('utf-8')
        return value

    def _ensure_unicode(self, row):
        return [self._ensure_unicode_value(value) for value in row]


class ForceUnicodeCursor(Cursor):

    def _do_get_result(self):
        conn = self._get_db()

        self._result = result = conn._result

        self.rowcount = result.affected_rows
        self.description = result.description
        self.lastrowid = result.insert_id
        self._rows = [self._ensure_unicode(row) for row in result.rows]


class ForceUnicodeDictCursor(DictCursor):

    def _conv_row(self, row):
        if row is None:
            return None
        return self.dict_type(zip(self._fields, self._ensure_unicode(row)))

usage.py

import pymysql.cursors
from .force_unicode_cursors import ForceUnicodeDictCursor

db = pymysql.connect(
    cursorclass=ForceUnicodeDictCursor,
    host=DB_HOST,
    port=DB_PORT,
    db=DB_DB,
    user=DB_USER,
    password=DB_PASSWORD,
)

db.ping(True)