[Answered ]-Why is my django snippet not working?

Python functions that don’t explicitly return anything will return None. If this code is returning None on your production server, it’s probably because it’s hitting that last except: pass block, as you mentioned.

Without reading the actual code (which I haven’t), I’d say replace that pass with return '' to safely swallow the urlfetch.Error or decide what you want to happen in that case and implement some new code for that block.