The reason for this error is that in Python 3, strings are Unicode, but when transmitting on the network, the data needs to be bytes instead. We can convert bytes to string using bytes class decode() instance method, So you need to decode the bytes object to produce a string. In Python 3 , the default encoding is "utf-8" , so you can use directly: b"python byte to string".decode("utf-8") Python makes a clear distinction between bytes and strings . Bytes objects contain raw data — a sequence of octets — whereas strings are Unicode sequences . Conversion between these two types is explicit: you encode a string to get bytes, specifying an encoding (which defaults to UTF-8); and you decode bytes to get a string. Clients of these functions should be aware that such conversions may fail, and should consider how failures are handled.   ... View more

That really did the trick, thanks. ... View more

Thank you - this was very helpful ... View more

Sorry it was some copy paste issue .Now it is working fine. Thank you. ... View more

The idea seems to be under consideration by Splunk, see Splunk Ideas. ... View more