Python XML processing with lxml

For any Element instance E, the .items() method returns the attributes as if they were a dictionary and you had called the .items() method on that dictionary: the result is a list of two-element tuples (name, value), one for each XML attribute of E.

Attribute values are returned in no particular order.

Here's an example.

>>> node = etree.fromstring ( "<event time='1830' cost='3.50' rating='nc-03'/>" )
>>> node.items()
[('cost', '3.50'), ('time', '1830'), ('rating', 'nc-03')]
>>>