Comment 0 for bug 691167

In the event serialization format, the third array is array of bytes or ay as dbus signature.

When an event enters an extension, it looks like
Event([dbus.Array([u'', u'1292500628312', u'', u'', u'application://foo.desktop'], signature=dbus.Signature('s')), [Subject([u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u''])], dbus.Array([], signature=dbus.Signature('y'))])

which implies that payload is array of bytes

Now look at _zeitgeist/engine/datamodel.py at line 58
where you get the line
>> popo.append(str(ev[2]))

Really so when you do str() on dbus.Array([], signature=dbus.Signature('y'))
you get "dbus.Array([], signature=dbus.Signature('y'))" instead of the contents of bytes converted to string

Now when you call Event.get_plain on

Event([dbus.Array([u'', u'1292500628312', u'', u'', u'application://foo.desktop'], signature=dbus.Signature('s')), [Subject([u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u''])], dbus.Array([], signature=dbus.Signature('y'))])

you get

[[u'', u'1292500628312', u'', u'', u'application://foo.desktop'], [[u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u'']], "dbus.Array([], signature=dbus.Signature('y'))"]

Now what you expect