import ElementTree as ET
import cStringIO

SAMPLE = """\
<root>
   <element key='value'>text</element>
   <element>text</element>tail
   <empty-element/>
</root>
"""

SAMPLE_NS = """\
<root xmlns='namespace'>
   <element key='value'>text</element>
   <ns:element xmlns:ns='namespace2'>text</ns:element>tail
   <empty-element/>
</root>
"""

ET.dump(ET.XML(SAMPLE))
ET.dump(ET.XML(SAMPLE_NS))

events = "start", "end", "start-ns", "end-ns"

for event, elem in ET.iterparse(cStringIO.StringIO(SAMPLE)):
    print event, elem

for event, elem in ET.iterparse(cStringIO.StringIO(SAMPLE_NS), events):
    print event, elem

if 0:
    import time
    t0 = time.time()
    ET.parse("hamlet.xml")
    print time.time() - t0