def safe_int(val, default=None):

    """

    Returns int() of val if val is not convertable to int use default

    instead

    :param val:

    :param default:

    """

    try:

        val = int(val)

        val = default

    return val

def safe_unicode(str_, from_encoding=None):

    """

    safe unicode function. Does few trick to turn str_ into unicode

    In case of UnicodeDecode error we try to return it with encoding detected

    by chardet library if it fails fallback to unicode with errors replaced