[joelkeener]

Summary

Enable bigip_ssl_key_cert, bigip_ssl_key, and bigip_ssl_certificate modules to accept and upload certificate/key content with non-UTF-8 character encodings (Latin-1, CP1252, etc.). Fixes UTF-8 codec errors when uploading certificates with extended metadata while maintaining full backward compatibility with UTF-8 content. Also resolves Ansible 2.24+ deprecation warnings for module imports.

Changes

Core Encoding Fix (3 modules)

• bigip_ssl_key_cert.py, bigip_ssl_key.py, bigip_ssl_certificate.py
  • Replaced StringIO with BytesIO for raw byte handling
  • Added _to_bytes() method to ModuleParameters class to convert strings to bytes while preserving surrogate characters using surrogateescape error handler
  • Updated _get_hash() to use BytesIO without UTF-8 encoding
  • Updated create_on_device() and update_on_device() to use BytesIO for key/cert content

Deprecation Fixes

• common.py: Updated import from ansible.module_utils._text to ansible.module_utils.common.text.converters
• bigip_data_group.py: Updated import from ansible.module_utils._text to ansible.module_utils.common.text.converters
• loader.py: Updated imports for to_bytes and to_text from new location

Documentation Updates

• bigip_ssl_key_cert.py, bigip_ssl_key.py, bigip_ssl_certificate.py
  • Added notes describing support for non-UTF-8 encoded content
  • Added example showing certificate import with metadata encoding

Testing

• Manual integration testing: Playbook successfully uploads certificates with Latin-1 and CP1252 encoded metadata
• Unit tests: Existing tests pass (10/11 for ssl_key_cert, 3/5 for ssl_certificate, 1/2 for ssl_key; pre-existing infrastructure failures unrelated to changes)
• Verified existing UTF-8 behavior preserved (backward compatible)
• Verified deprecation warnings eliminated with updated imports

Checklist

• Unit tests pass (confirmed no regressions from encoding changes)
• Code follows project conventions (matches existing patterns)
• Backward compatible with UTF-8 content
• Manual integration testing completed
• Deprecation warnings resolved for Ansible 2.24+
• Documentation updated (description and examples)
• All three SSL modules fixed consistently

Ref:AUTOTOOL-5428

[crosbygw]

Summary
The delegated review reported no definite bugs. It called out a caveat:

1. The new documentation claim about supporting content with "any character encoding" was broader than what the subagent could verify.
   I then reviewed the branch against devel directly and checked the full context of the changed files. The changes are limited to:

• switching deprecated ansible.module_utils._text imports to ansible.module_utils.common.text.converters
• changing SSL cert/key content handling from StringIO to BytesIO
• hashing and upload paths now operating on raw bytes via surrogateescape
  That implementation is internally consistent:
• the collection declares requires_ansible: '>=2.16.0', so the new import path matches the supported Ansible floor
• upload_file() already has an explicit BytesIO code path in plugins/module_utils/icontrol.py, so the stream type change fits existing helper behavior
• the SHA1 comparison logic now hashes uploaded bytes directly instead of re-encoding chunked text, which is the right direction for preserving non-UTF-8-originated content

[joelkeener]

While it is true that Ansible now accepts any character encoding in cert/key/chain metadata, iControl currently replaces some characters, if they are non-utf-8 chars, which means this documentation is accurate before and after that is fixed.

We have tested these 27 encodings:

• Latin-based (8):

1. UTF-8 - Café résumé naïve ✓
2. CP1252 - "Smart quotes" and Euro € ✓
3. ISO-8859-15 - Café with Euro € symbol ✓
4. CP1250 - Zażółw gęślą jaźń ✓
5. CP1254 - Merhaba dünya çalışma ✓
6. ISO-8859-9 - Merhaba dünya ✓
7. UTF-16 - Café résumé ✓
8. UTF-32 - Café résumé ✓

• Cyrillic (2):

9. Russian - Привет мир ✓
10. Ukrainian - Привіт світе ✓

• Middle East (3):

11. Arabic - مرحبا بالعالم ✓
12. Hebrew - שלום עולם ✓
13. CP1256 - مرحبا بالعالم ✓

• European (8):

14. Greek - Καλημέρα κόσμε ✓
15. CP1253 - Καλημέρα κόσμε ✓
16. CP1257 - Sveiki pasaulē ✓
17. CP1258 - Xin chào thế giới ✓
18. ISO-8859-10 - Halló heimur ✓
19. ISO-8859-13 - Sveikas pasaule ✓
20. ISO-8859-14 - Halló saoghal ✓
21. CP1255 - שלום עולם ✓

• Asian (10):

22. Thai - สวัสดีชาวโลก ✓
23. ISO-8859-11 - สวัสดีชาวโลก ✓
24. Japanese - こんにちは世界 ✓
25. Chinese Simplified - 你好世界 ✓
26. Big5 - 你好世界 ✓
27. Korean - 안녕하세요 세계 ✓