python xml library with similar functionality to json library

Question

Python has a json library where you can do json.loads(s) to load json into a python data structure consisting of lists and maps. Is there something equivalent for xml? All the xml libraries I've seen map to a DOM where you have to know special API functions, which is IMO less easy to work with.

Answer 1

No, on the simple note that JSON objects directly translate to Python objects. How do you turn XML into Python - the answer is the DOM.

There are, however, simpler ways to work with XML. The best, in my opinion, for ease of use, is xml.etree.ElementTree , which allows you to iterate through the elements of the XML and create a tree, which is pretty easy to work with comparable with other ways of getting at XML data.