Dieter, Appreciate your help. I found a way to test if the "ExternalMethod" really returned a dict here: http://infrae.com/mailman_/pipermail/silva-dev/2004q2/001091.html And you were right! This is not seen as as a valid dictionary (nor is it seen as a string): stuff = container.externalmethod(feedurl=feedurl) test = same_type(stuff, {}) print test return printed returns "0" However, interestingly enough, if I copy and paste the all the text that is returned by the external method into the script, I am able to confirm that it is a dictionary: stuff= {'lastbuilddate': u'Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:06:18 EDT', u'subtitle': 'U.S.', u'generator': 'NPR/RSS Generator 2.0 etc...'} test = same_type(stuff, {}) print test return printed returns "1" Also, I tried to render the copied text from the external method using the page template, and received a different error message: "TypeError: string indices must be integers" (see the attached traceback). I don't know if this last test will be useful, but I thought I'd give it a try. Do you know if there is a way of changing the data type of an object? Do you know if there is a listing of data types that I could test for? Thanks kindly, John T.