Convert an lxml.etree node tree into a dict.

elem2dict.py

def elem2dict(node):
    """
    Convert an lxml.etree node tree into a dict.
    """
    d = {}
    for e in node.iterchildren():
        key = e.tag.split('}')[1] if '}' in e.tag else e.tag
        value = e.text if e.text.strip() else elem2dict(e)
        d[key] = value
    return d

I kept finding white space returned where there should be deeper nodes, added the strip to the test for text existence.