How to parse SOAP XML with Python?

The issue here is dealing with the XML namespaces:

import requests
from xml.etree import ElementTree

response = requests.get('http://www.labs.skanetrafiken.se/v2.2/querystation.asp?inpPointfr=yst')

# define namespace mappings to use as shorthand below
namespaces = {
    'soap': 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/',
    'a': 'http://www.etis.fskab.se/v1.0/ETISws',
}
dom = ElementTree.fromstring(response.content)

# reference the namespace mappings here by `<name>:`
names = dom.findall(
    './soap:Body'
    '/a:GetStartEndPointResponse'
    '/a:GetStartEndPointResult'
    '/a:StartPoints'
    '/a:Point'
    '/a:Name',
    namespaces,
)
for name in names:
    print(name.text)

The namespaces come from the xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" and xmlns="http://www.etis.fskab.se/v1.0/ETISws" attributes on the Envelope and GetStartEndPointResponse nodes respectively.

Keep in mind, a namespace is inherited by all children nodes of a parent even if the namespace isn't explicitly specified on the child's tag as <namespace:tag>.

Note: I had to use response.content rather than response.body.

An old question but worth to mention another option for this task.

I like to use xmltodict (Github) a lightweight converter of XML to python dictionary.

Take your soap response in a variable named stack

Parse it with xmltodict.parse

In [48]: stack_d = xmltodict.parse(stack)

Check the result:

In [49]: stack_d
Out[49]:
OrderedDict([('soap:Envelope',
            OrderedDict([('@xmlns:soap',
                            'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'),
                        ('@xmlns:xsd', 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'),
                        ('@xmlns:xsi',
                            'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'),
                        ('soap:Body',
                            OrderedDict([('GetStartEndPointResponse',
                                        OrderedDict([('@xmlns',
                                                        'http://www.etis.fskab.se/v1.0/ETISws'),
                                                    ('GetStartEndPointResult',
                                                        OrderedDict([('Code',
                                                                    '0'),
                                                                    ('Message',
                                                                    None),
                                                                    ('StartPoints',
                                                                    OrderedDict([('Point',
                                                                                    [OrderedDict([('Id',
                                                                                                '545'),
                                                                                                ('Name',
                                                                                                'Get Me'),
                                                                                                ('Type',
                                                                                                'sometype'),
                                                                                                ('X',
                                                                                                '333'),
                                                                                                ('Y',
                                                                                                '222')]),
                                                                                    OrderedDict([('Id',
                                                                                                '634'),
                                                                                                ('Name',
                                                                                                'Get me too'),
                                                                                                ('Type',
                                                                                                'sometype'),
                                                                                                ('X',
                                                                                                '555'),
                                                                                                ('Y',
                                                                                                '777')])])]))]))]))]))]))])

At this point it become as easy as to browse a python dictionnary

In [50]: stack_d['soap:Envelope']['soap:Body']['GetStartEndPointResponse']['GetStartEndPointResult']['StartPoints']['Point']
Out[50]:
[OrderedDict([('Id', '545'),
            ('Name', 'Get Me'),
            ('Type', 'sometype'),
            ('X', '333'),
            ('Y', '222')]),
OrderedDict([('Id', '634'),
            ('Name', 'Get me too'),
            ('Type', 'sometype'),
            ('X', '555'),
            ('Y', '777')])]