input.xml

<project-report>
  <project-name>lab5</project-name>     **Required
  <upload-date>NONE</upload-date>       **Required
  <upload-updated>NONE</upload-updated>   **Required
  <due-date>2011-10-20 00:00:00</due-date>  **Required
  <section-name>W</section-name>   **Required
  <grader-name>GRADER_Last</grader-name>   **Required
  <student-info>   **Required
    <student-name>Barish,David</student-name>   **Required
    <student-kuid>3450008</student-kuid>   **Required
  </student-info>
  <grade-criteria>   **Required
    <stacks awarded_pts="7" max_pts="7">None</stacks>   **For all of the grade criteria, must have awarded and max pt attributes
    <queues awarded_pts="7" max_pts="7">None</queues>   **but the element name and number of elements is arbitrary
    <linked_lists awarded_pts="10" max_pts="10">For the destructor, you can just call remove(0) while is_empty returns false.</linked_lists>
    <command_logic awarded_pts="18" max_pts="18">None</command_logic>
    <style_output awarded_pts="9" max_pts="9">None</style_output>
    <documentation awarded_pts="9" max_pts="9">None</documentation>
    <total awarded_pts="1" max_pts="60">None</total>
  </grade-criteria>
  <penalty percent="0">None</penalty>   **Required
  <comments>Great Project </comments>   **Required
  <!--NO - Not Ready, READY - Ready to send, SENT - Sent to student-->
  <email-status>NO</email-status>   **Required
</project-report>

toobj.py

from lxml import etree, objectify


class ProjectReport(etree.ElementBase):

    @classmethod
    def fromstring(cls, input_string):
        pr = cls()
        o = pr._o = objectify.fromstring(input_string)
        
        pr.name = o['project-name']
        pr.upload_date = o['upload-date']
        pr.upload_updated = o['upload-updated']
        pr.due_date = o['due-date']
        pr.section_name = o['section-name']
        pr.grader_name = o['grader-name']
        pr.student = (o['student-info']['student-kuid'], o['student-info']['student-name'])
        pr.grades = [(el.tag, el.attrib) for el in o['grade-criteria'].getchildren()]
        pr.penalty = o.penalty.get('percent')
        pr.comments = o.comments
        pr.email_status = o['email-status']

        return pr

if __name__ == '__main__':
    p = ProjectReport.fromstring(open('input.xml').read())
    
    print p
    print p.__dict__