uopen (
        fn,
        mode='rb',
        encoding='utf8',
        errors='strict',
        buffering=1,
        )

Open a file named by fn with mode mode whose contents are encoded using encoding (default utf8), where we will be reading and writing data as unicode strings

utf8orlatin1 ( aStr )

Convert string aStr to a unicode string. First, hope that it is utf8, but if it doesn't seem to be, assume it was latin1.

utrunc ( s,  l )

Return an initial substring of s where the utf8 representation takes no more than l bytes

Useful for safely truncating unicode strings for storage in utf8 form in database fields that put an upper limit on length.