Python minidom XML parser - ignore child tags

Question

I have a XML file which looks like:

<tag1>
    <tag2>
        I am too good <italic>to be true</italic>
    </tag2>
</tag1>

Now, When I want to extract the data within the "tag2" tags, then assuming the XML file is read into the "XML_data" variable:

XML_data.getElementsByTagName('tag1')[0].getElementsByTagName('tag2')[0].childNodes[0].data
evaluates to "I am too good"
and 
XML_data.getElementsByTagName('tag1')[0].getElementsByTagName('tag2')[0].getElementsByTagName('italic')[0].childNodes[0].data
evaluates to "to be true"

What I want is to be able to extract the whole chunk within tag2, by ignoring the italic tags. ie, I want my out put to be

"I am too good <italic>to be true</italic>"

How do I do this? Please help.

Answer 1

Finally used ElementTree

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import re

def extractTextFromElement(elementName, stringofxml):
    tree = ET.fromstring(stringofxml)
    for child in tree.getiterator():
        if child.tag == elementName:
            len = ET.tostring(child)
            return re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', len)


usage: extractTextFromElement('tag2', XML_data)