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Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
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Description:

def _encode_item(self, item):
        '''
        Encode an item object

        @requires: The object be serializable
        '''
        if self.encoding.__name__ == 'pickle':
            return self.encoding.dumps(item, protocol=-1)
        else:
            return self.encoding.dumps(item)