I'm trying to open a file that is in database but I got this error message instead coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, instance found I don't quite understand why. My code looks like this def imageSetup(self, dataID, REQUEST): from StringIO import StringIO # Get the original image and data in memory and open the file imageData=getattr(self, dataID) imageDataFile=StringIO(str(imageData.data)) tfw = open(imageDataFile, "r") I upload a text file into ZOPE database and the file consist of six lines of float point numbers that I want to use with REQUEST.set I call this method using < dtml-call "imageSetup(textFile, REQUEST)" > can anyone help me... please... did I made a mistake with this code --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail makes sharing a breeze.