[web2py] need help with unicode decoding/encoding upload file

[weheh]

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm *still* having trouble getting unicode
working on uploaded files. I'm sure this is an incredibly stupid easy
thing to do, but unicode has never come easy for me.

# model
db.define_table('infile',
    Field('name', 'upload',uploadseparate=True))

# controller for uploading using a component
def from_file():
    form = SQLFORM(db.infile)
    if form.process().accepted:
        # store uploaded file
        request.vars.name.file.seek(0)  # rewind uploaded file
        infile_id = db.infile.insert(
                name=db.infile.name.store(
                    request.vars.name.file,
                    request.vars.name.filename
                    )
                )
        response.flash = ...
        response.js = ...
    elif file_form.errors:
        ...
    return dict(form=form)

I'm trying to figure out how to encode the uploaded file before
inserting it into the db manually. I've tried lots of things to encode
before inserting. The latest failed attempt is this:

text = reqeust.vars.name.file.getvalue()
from gluon import decoder
text = decoder.decoder(text)

and then inserted text rather than request.vars.name.file, but this
doesn't work. decoder throws a ticket saying

  File "N:\web2py\gluon\decoder.py", line 74, in decoder
    return buffer.decode(encoding).encode('utf8')
  File "c:\Program Files (x86)\Python25\lib\encodings\utf_8.py", line
16, in decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 4-7:
invalid data

I'm really just grasping at straws right now.

Any helpful examples would be appreciated.