title: Python - convert <type 'instance'> to <type 'str'>?
body: <p>I'm using libxml2 and libxslt to process XML files. The return value is of type instance but I need to have a UTF-8 static string.</p>
  
  <pre><code>styledoc = libxml2.parseFile(style_file)
  style = libxslt.parseStylesheetDoc(styledoc)
  doc = libxml2.parseDoc(xml_data.encode("UTF-8")) 
  html = style.applyStylesheet(doc)
  
  return html # &lt;- this has to be a utf-8 static string
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How could I convert the return value to a static string?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for any help.</p>