Question: I can't figure out what the 'bytes' method is complaining about. In the code below, i am trying to generate an authentication key for my client and i keep getting this error [1]

```
import hmac
import hashlib
import base64

message = bytes("Message", 'utf-8') # errors here
secret = bytes("secret", 'utf-8')

signature = base64.b64encode(hmac.new(secret, message, digestmod=hashlib.sha256).digest());
print(signature)

```

[1]

```
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "API/test/auth-client.py", line 11, in <module>
    message = bytes("Message", 'utf-8')
TypeError: str() takes at most 1 argument (2 given)

```

Answer: 
`bytes()` in Python 2.x is the same as `str()` and it accepts only one string argument. 

Use just `message = "Message"` and `secret = "secret"`. You don't even need `bytes()` here.
try,

```
import hmac
import hashlib
import base64

message = bytes("Message")
secret = bytes("secret")

signature = base64.b64encode(hmac.new(secret, message, digestmod=hashlib.sha256).digest())
print(signature)

```