def unserialize(str, klass):
    obj = vistrails.db.services.io.unserialize(str, klass.vtType)
    if obj:
        #maybe we should also put a try except here
        klass.convert(obj)
    return obj
returns VisTrails entity given an XML serialization
dataset/ETHPy150Open VisTrails/VisTrails/vistrails/core/db/io.py/unserialize