--- a/SrvTxtUtils.py	Wed Aug 22 16:51:21 2012 +0200
+++ b/SrvTxtUtils.py	Tue Aug 28 20:24:01 2012 +0200
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
 import logging
 
 
-srvTxtUtilsVersion = "1.4.1"
+srvTxtUtilsVersion = "1.5"
 
 def getInt(number, default=0):
     """returns always an int (0 in case of problems)"""
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
         except:
             return s.decode('latin-1')
     else:
-        return unicode(s)
+        return s
 
 def utf8ify(s):
     """encode unicode object or string into byte string in utf-8 representation.
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
     if isinstance(s, str):
         return s
     else:
-        return unicode(s).encode('utf-8')
+        return s.encode('utf-8')
 
 def getText(node, recursive=0):
     """returns all text content of a node and its subnodes"""
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@
 
 
 
-def getHttpData(url, data=None, num_tries=3, timeout=10):
+def getHttpData(url, data=None, num_tries=3, timeout=10, noExceptions=False):
     """returns result from url+data HTTP request"""
     # we do GET (by appending data to url)
     if isinstance(data, str) or isinstance(data, unicode):
@@ -116,6 +116,9 @@
         response.close()
         return data
     
+    if noExceptions:
+        return None
+    
     raise IOError("ERROR fetching HTTP data from %s: %s"%(url,errmsg))
     #return None