Hi, There is a little inversion in the documentation of 'xml.dom': http://docs.python.org/library/xml.dom.html """ 19.6.2.3. NodeList Objects A NodeList represents a sequence of nodes. These objects are used in two ways in the DOM Core recommendation: the Element objects provides one as its list of child nodes, and the getElementsByTagName() and getElementsByTagNameNS() methods of Node return objects with this interface to represent query results. """ It is the 'Node' objects who provides 'childNodes' and not the 'Element' objects. And vice versa for the two methods 'getElementsByTagName()' and 'getElementsByTagNameNS()': Node.childNodes Element.getElementsByTagName(tagName) Element.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName) Document.getElementsByTagName(tagName) Document.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName) Cordially, Vincent Ollivier contact@vincentollivier.com