Convert nested XML data into dictionaries

xml-to-dict.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from pprint import pprint
import code

tree = ET.parse('biosample_result.xml')

def expand_blob(blob, attributes={}):
    '''
    convert an XML node (and all of its children) into a nested
    dictionary
    '''
    attributes[blob.tag] = blob.attrib

    for child in blob:
        expand_blob(child, attributes)

    return attributes


for biosample in tree.getroot():

    attributes = {}
    pprint(expand_blob(biosample, attributes))