%uxxxx is a non standard URL encoding scheme that is not supported by urllib.parse.unquote() (Py 3) / urllib.unquote() (Py 2).

It was only ever part of ECMAScript ECMA-262 3rd edition; the format was rejected by the W3C and was never a part of an RFC.

You could use a regular expression to convert such codepoints:

try:

    unichr  # only in Python 2

except NameError:

    unichr = chr  # Python 3



re.sub(r'%u([a-fA-F0-9]{4}|[a-fA-F0-9]{2})', lambda m: unichr(int(m.group(1), 16)), quoted)

This decodes both the %uxxxx and the %uxx form ECMAScript 3rd ed can decode.

Demo:

>>> import re

>>> quoted = '%u003c%u0062%u0072%u003e'

>>> re.sub(r'%u([a-fA-F0-9]{4}|[a-fA-F0-9]{2})', lambda m: chr(int(m.group(1), 16)), quoted)

'<br>'

>>> altquoted = '%u3c%u0062%u0072%u3e'

>>> re.sub(r'%u([a-fA-F0-9]{4}|[a-fA-F0-9]{2})', lambda m: chr(int(m.group(1), 16)), altquoted)

'<br>'

but you should avoid using the encoding altogether if possible.