When using python-barbicanclient to store a binary blob, if the user pre-encodes the binary in base64, the client will unexpectedly drop the encoding when retrieving the secret. See code sample below:
my_payload = base64.b64encode(os.urandom(16)) # orignal base64 payload
my_secret = client.secrets.create()
my_secret.payload = my_payload
my_secret.payload_content_type = 'application/octet-stream'
my_secret.payload_content_encoding = 'base64'
my_ref = my_secret.store()
retrieved_secret = client.secrets.get(my_ref)
assert retrieved_secret.payload == my_secret.payload
The assertion fails because the retrieved secret payload is the actual bytes, not the base64 encoded payload we originally give to the client. My expectation is that the thing I give the client should be the same thing I get back, but because of the payload_content_encoding semantics, this is not the case.
A proposed solution would be to deprecate the payload_content_encoding parameter, which will prevent these odd scenarios from happening. This will probably have to be revisited once the content-type blueprint implementation lands.
Related fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https:/