Fixed #23522 -- Changed reverse() to return a Unicode string; not bytes

django/core/urlresolvers.py

@@ -577,9 +577,9 @@ def reverse(viewname, urlconf=None, args=None, kwargs=None, prefix=None, current
         if ns_pattern:
             resolver = get_ns_resolver(ns_pattern, resolver)
 
-    return iri_to_uri(resolver._reverse_with_prefix(view, prefix, *args, **kwargs))
+    return force_text(iri_to_uri(resolver._reverse_with_prefix(view, prefix, *args, **kwargs)))
 
-reverse_lazy = lazy(reverse, str)
+reverse_lazy = lazy(reverse, six.text_type)
 
 
 def clear_url_caches():

docs/releases/1.8.txt

@@ -607,6 +607,10 @@ Miscellaneous
 * The default max size of the Oracle test tablespace has increased from 200M
   to 500M.
 
+* :func:`~django.core.urlresolvers.reverse` and
+  :func:`~django.core.urlresolvers.reverse_lazy` now return Unicode strings
+  instead of byte strings.
+
 .. _deprecated-features-1.8:
 
 Features deprecated in 1.8

tests/urlpatterns_reverse/tests.py

@@ -222,6 +222,13 @@ class URLPatternReverse(TestCase):
             # exception
             self.fail("Expected a NoReverseMatch, but none occurred.")
 
+    def test_reverse_returns_unicode(self):
+        name, expected, args, kwargs = test_data[0]
+        self.assertIsInstance(
+            reverse(name, args=args, kwargs=kwargs),
+            six.text_type
+        )
+
 
 class ResolverTests(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_resolver_repr(self):