import json def encode_if_needed(value): if isinstance(value, str): value = value.encode('utf-8') return value def decode_if_needed(value): if isinstance(value, (bytes, bytearray)): value = value.decode('utf-8') return value def serialize_all(anchor, message): return [encode_if_needed(a) for a in (anchor, json.dumps(message))] def deserialize_all(anchor, message): return decode_if_needed(anchor), json.loads(message)