App Engine Ndb StringProperty And String Hashes

I'm using PyCrypto for generating secure key hashes. I want to store one or more of the partial keys I generate. Each partial key is in the form \x0f|4\xcc\x02b\xc3\xf8\xb0\xd8\xfc

Solution 1:

Improved Answer:

In this case instead of storing the key as String or Text, you should use a BlobProperty which stores an uninterpreted byte string.

Original Answer:

To convert bytes (strings) to unicode you use the method decode. You also need to use an encoding that preserves the original binary data, which is ISO-8859-1. See ISO-8859-1 encoding and binary data preservation

unicode_key = key.decode('iso-8859-1')
bytes_key = unicode_key.encode('iso-8859-1')

Consider also using A TextProperty instead, as StringProperties are indexed.