title: Google Protocol Buffers (protobuf) in Python3 - trouble with ParseFromString (encoding?)
body: <p>I've got Google Protocol buffers 80% working in Python3. My .proto file works, I'm encoding data, life is almost good.
  The problem is that I can't ParseFromString the result of SerializeToString.
  When I print SerializeToString it looks like what I'd expect, a fairly compact binary representation (preceded by b').</p>
  
  <p>My guess is that perhaps this is a difference in the way Python2 and Python3 handle strings. The putput of SerializeToString is Bytes, not a string.</p>
  
  <p>Printed output of SerializeToString (Python type is ):</p>
  
  <pre><code>b'\x10\xd7\xeb\x8e\xcd\x04\x1a\x0cnamegoeshere2@\x08\x80\xf8\xde\xc3\x9f\xb0\x81\x89\x14\x11\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x80d\xc0\x19\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc0m@!\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x80R\xc0)\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00x\xb7\xc01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x8c\x95@9\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x16\xb2@'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>result of ParseFromString(message):</p>
  
  <pre><code>None
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>No error is provided...</p>
  
  <p>So - my best guess is that all I need to do is .decode() the bytes object generated, the problem is that I have no clue what the encoding is. I've tried UTF-8, -16, Latin-1, and a few others without success. My Google-Fu is strong but I haven't found anything on this. </p>
  
  <p>Any help would be appreciated.</p>