Python3 error: initial_value must be str or None, with StringIO

This looks like another python3 bytes vs. str problem. Your response is of type bytes (which is different in python 3 from str). You need to get it into a string first using response.read().decode('utf-8') say and then use StringIO on it. Or you may want to use BytesIO as someone said - but if you expect it to be str, preferred way is to decode into an str first.

response.read() returns an instance of bytes while StringIO is an in-memory stream for text only. Use BytesIO instead.

From What's new in Python 3.0 - Text Vs. Data Instead Of Unicode Vs. 8-bit

The StringIO and cStringIO modules are gone. Instead, import the io module and use io.StringIO or io.BytesIO for text and data respectively.

Consider using six.StringIO instead of io.StringIO.