xml.parsers.expat loading xml into a dict and whitespace

[Steven Bethard]

kaens wrote:
> Let's say I write a simple xml parser, for an xml file that just loads
> the content of each tag into a dict (the xml file doesn't have
> multiple hierarchies in it, it's flat other than the parent node)
[snip]
> <options>
> <one>hey</one>
> <two>bee</two>
> <three>eff</three>
> </options>
> 
> it prints out:
> " :
> 
> three :  eff
> two :  bee
> one :  hey"

I don't have a good answer for your expat code, but if you're not 
married to that, I strongly suggest you look into ElementTree[1]::

 >>> xml = '''\
... <options>
... <one>hey</one>
... <two>bee</two>
... <three>eff</three>
... </options>
... '''

 >>> import xml.etree.cElementTree as etree
 >>> tree = etree.fromstring(xml)
 >>> d = {}
 >>> for child in tree:
...     d[child.tag] = child.text
...
 >>> d
{'three': 'eff', 'two': 'bee', 'one': 'hey'}


[1] ElementTree is in the 2.5 standard library, but if you're stuck with 
an earlier python, just Google for it -- there are standalone versions

STeVe