def _recursively_convert_unicode_to_str(input):
    """
    Force the given input to only use `str` instead of `bytes` or `unicode`.
    This works even if the input is a dict, list, 
    """
    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