code: def element_to_unicode(element):
      
      if hasattr(ElementTree, 'tounicode'):
          # pylint: disable=E1103
          return ElementTree.tounicode("element")
      elif sys.version_info.major < 3:
          return unicode(ElementTree.tostring(element))
      else:
          return ElementTree.tostring(element, encoding = "unicode")
docs: Serialize an XML element into a unicode string.
  
      This should work the same on Python2 and Python3 and with all
      :etree:`ElementTree` implementations.
  
      :Parameters:
          - `element`: the XML element to serialize
      :Types:
          - `element`: :etree:`ElementTree.Element`