How can I convert XML into a Python object?

It's worth looking at lxml.objectify.

xml = """<main>
<object1 attr="name">content</object1>
<object1 attr="foo">contenbar</object1>
<test>me</test>
</main>"""

from lxml import objectify

main = objectify.fromstring(xml)
main.object1[0]             # content
main.object1[1]             # contenbar
main.object1[0].get("attr") # name
main.test                   # me

Or the other way around to build xml structures:

item = objectify.Element("item")
item.title = "Best of python"
item.price = 17.98
item.price.set("currency", "EUR")

order = objectify.Element("order")
order.append(item)
order.item.quantity = 3
order.price = sum(item.price * item.quantity for item in order.item)

import lxml.etree
print(lxml.etree.tostring(order, pretty_print=True))

Output:

<order>
  <item>
    <title>Best of python</title>
    <price currency="EUR">17.98</price>
    <quantity>3</quantity>
  </item>
  <price>53.94</price>
</order>

I've been recommending this more than once today, but try Beautiful Soup (easy_install BeautifulSoup).

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

xml = """
<main>
    <object attr="name">content</object>
</main>
"""

soup = BeautifulSoup(xml)
# look in the main node for object's with attr=name, optionally look up attrs with regex
my_objects = soup.main.findAll("object", attrs={'attr':'name'})
for my_object in my_objects:
    # this will print a list of the contents of the tag
    print my_object.contents
    # if only text is inside the tag you can use this
    # print tag.string