Python3 and hmac . How to handle string not being binary

try

codecs.encode()

which can be used both in python2.7.12 and 3.5.2

import hashlib
import codecs
import hmac

a = "aaaaaaa"
b = "bbbbbbb"
hmac.new(codecs.encode(a), msg=codecs.encode(b), digestmod=hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()

Not to resurrect an old question but I did want to add something I feel is missing from this answer, to which I had trouble finding an appropriate explanation/example of anywhere else:

Aquiles Carattino was pretty close with his attempt at converting the string to bytes, but was missing the second argument, the encoding of the string to be converted to bytes.

If someone would like to convert a string to bytes through some other means than static assignment (such as reading from a config file or a DB), the following should work:

(Python 3+ only, not compatible with Python 2)

import hmac, hashlib

def _generate_signature(data):
  key = 'key' # Defined as a simple string.
  key_bytes= bytes(key , 'latin-1') # Commonly 'latin-1' or 'ascii'
  data_bytes = bytes(data, 'latin-1') # Assumes `data` is also an ascii string.
  return hmac.new(key_bytes, data_bytes , hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()

print(
  _generate_signature('this is my string of data')
)

for python3 this is how i solved it.

import codecs
import hmac

def _generate_signature(data):
  return hmac.new(codecs.encode(key), codecs.encode(data), codecs.encode(hashlib.sha256)).hexdigest()
    

You can use bytes literal: b'key'

def _generate_signature(data):
    return hmac.new(b'key', data, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()

In addition to that, make sure data is also bytes. For example, if it is read from file, you need to use binary mode (rb) when opening the file.