Python3 Script (without dependencies) to parse XML File incrementally and transform it to key-value pairs

sample4.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
    <country name="Liechtenstein">
        <rank>1</rank>
        <year>2008</year>
        <gdppc>141100</gdppc>
        <neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
        <neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
    </country>
    <country name="Singapore">
        <rank>4</rank>
        <year>2011</year>
        <gdppc>59900</gdppc>
        <neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
    </country>
    <country name="Panama">
        <rank>68</rank>
        <year>2011</year>
        <gdppc>13600</gdppc>
        <neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
        <neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
    </country>
</data>

xml_to_xpath.py

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from collections import defaultdict

# Path to XML file
file_path = "/Users/Raphael/Downloads/sample4.xml"

# Result Container
result = defaultdict(list)

# XMl Namespaces Mapping the Fully Qualified Namespace to its prefix
# h ->   http://www.w3.org/HTML/1998/html4
namespaces = {}

# Path to current processed xml element
xml_path   = []

# Flag
remove_namespaces = True


### Helper

def remove_namespace(tag):
    if "}" in tag:
        tag = tag.split("}")[1]
    
    return tag


def shorten_namespace(tag):
    for k, v in namespaces.items():
        pass


for event, elem in ET.iterparse(file_path, events=("start-ns", "start", "end")):
    if event == 'start':
        tag = elem.tag

        if remove_namespaces:
            tag = remove_namespace(elem.tag)

        xml_path.append(tag)
    elif event == 'end':
        # process the tag
        if elem.text and elem.text.strip():
            key = ".".join(xml_path)
            result[key].append(elem.text)
        
        if elem.attrib:
            prefix = ".".join(xml_path)
            for attribute, value in elem.attrib.items():
                key = prefix + ".@" + attribute
                result[key].append(value)

            
        xml_path.pop()
        elem.clear()
    elif event == "start-ns":
        namespaces[ "{" + elem[1] + "}"] = elem[0]


for k, v in namespaces.items():
    print(k, " ", v)


for k, v in result.items():
    print(k, " ", v)