code: def _recursively_convert_unicode_to_str(input):
      
      if isinstance(input, dict):
          return {_recursively_convert_unicode_to_str(key): _recursively_convert_unicode_to_str(value) for key, value in input.items()}
      elif isinstance(input, list):
          return [_recursively_convert_unicode_to_str(element) for element in input]
      elif not PYTHON_3 and isinstance(input, unicode):
          return input.encode('utf-8')
      else:
          return input
docs: Force the given input to only use `str` instead of `bytes` or `unicode`.
      This works even if the input is a dict, list,