Sometimes it is helpful for ElementrTree elements to reference their parent. This monkey patches ElementTree, but does not work with cElementTree. Found this going through some old filed (dated 2008-12-18) and figured it was worth saving.

etree_with_parent.py

from xml.etree import ElementTree as etree

class _ElementInterface(etree._ElementInterface):
    """ Add a 'parent' property to ElementTree Elements. Defaults to None. """
    parent = None

etree._ElementInterface = _ElementInterface

def SubElement(parent, tag, attrib={}, **extra):
    """ Replace SubElement factory func with one that also sets an Element's parent. """
    attrib = attrib.copy()
    attrib.update(extra)
    element = parent.makeelement(tag, attrib)
    parent.append(element)
    element.parent = parent
    return element

etree.SubElement = SubElement