Reading XML file and fetching its attributes value in Python

Here's an lxml snippet that extracts an attribute as well as element text (your question was a little ambiguous about which one you needed, so I'm including both):

from lxml import etree
doc = etree.parse(filename)

memoryElem = doc.find('memory')
print memoryElem.text        # element text
print memoryElem.get('unit') # attribute

You asked (in a comment on Ali Afshar's answer) whether minidom (2.x, 3.x) is a good alternative. Here's the equivalent code using minidom; judge for yourself which is nicer:

import xml.dom.minidom as minidom
doc = minidom.parse(filename)

memoryElem = doc.getElementsByTagName('memory')[0]
print ''.join( [node.data for node in memoryElem.childNodes] )
print memoryElem.getAttribute('unit')

lxml seems like the winner to me.

XML

<data>
    <items>
        <item name="item1">item1</item>
        <item name="item2">item2</item>
        <item name="item3">item3</item>
        <item name="item4">item4</item>
    </items>
</data>

Python :

from xml.dom import minidom
xmldoc = minidom.parse('items.xml')
itemlist = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName('item') 
print "Len : ", len(itemlist)
print "Attribute Name : ", itemlist[0].attributes['name'].value
print "Text : ", itemlist[0].firstChild.nodeValue
for s in itemlist :
    print "Attribute Name : ", s.attributes['name'].value
    print "Text : ", s.firstChild.nodeValue

etree, with lxml probably:

root = etree.XML(MY_XML)
uuid = root.find('uuid')
print uuid.text