Getting a list of XML tags in file, using xml.etree.ElementTree

You could use the built-in Python set comprehension:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

xmlTree = ET.parse('myXMLFile.xml')
tags = {elem.tag for elem in xmlTree.iter()}

If you specifically need a list, you can cast it to a list:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

xmlTree = ET.parse('myXMLFile.xml')
tags = list({elem.tag for elem in xmlTree.iter()})

I've done more of a research on the subject and found out suitable solution. Since this could be a common task to do, I'll answer it, hence I believe it could help others.

What I was looking for was etree method iter.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
# load and parse the file
xmlTree = ET.parse('myXMLFile.xml')

elemList = []

for elem in xmlTree.iter():
    elemList.append(elem.tag)

# now I remove duplicities - by convertion to set and back to list
elemList = list(set(elemList))

# Just printing out the result
print(elemList)

Important notes

• xml.etree.ElemTree is a standard Python library
• sample is written for Python v3.2.3
• mechanic used to remove duplicities is based on converting to set, which allows only unique values and then converting back to list.