xmltodict does not return a list for one element

In addition to the existing answers, xmltodict now also supports the following to force everything to be a list:

xml = xmltodict.parse(s, force_list=True)

This is of course not an elegant way, but this is what i have done to get the code run (if someone hase the same probleme an found this via google):

import xmltodict

def guaranteed_list(x):
    if not x:
        return []
    elif isinstance(x, list):
        return x
    else:
        return [x]

mydict = xmltodict.parse(xmlstringResults)    
for carsInGarage in guaranteed_list(mydict['garage']['car']):
    # do something...

but i thing i will write my code again and "use XML directly" as one of the comments said.

This problem is discussed in this issue on Github. The xmltodict package now supports

d = xmltodict.parse(s, force_list={'car'})

Although this still doesn't create an empty list if the field is absent.

I am using the combination of

1)

json_dict = xmltodict.parse(s, force_list={'item'})

And

2)

# Removes a level in python dict if it has only one specific key
# 
# Examples: 
# recursive_skip_dict_key_level({"c": {"a": "b"}}, "c")  # -> {"a", "b"}
# recursive_skip_dict_key_level({"c": ["a", "b"]}, "c") # -> ["a", "b"]
#
def recursive_skip_dict_key_level(d, skipped_key):
    if issubclass(type(d), dict):
        if list(d.keys()) == [skipped_key]:
            return recursive_skip_dict_key_level(d[skipped_key], skipped_key)
        else:
            for key in d.keys():
                d[key] = recursive_skip_dict_key_level(d[key], skipped_key)
            return d
    elif issubclass(type(d), list):
        new_list = []
        for e in d: 
            new_list.append(recursive_skip_dict_key_level(e, skipped_key))
        return new_list
    else: 
        return d

# Removes None values from a dict
# 
# Examples: 
# recursive_remove_none({"a": None})  # -> {}
# recursive_remove_none([None]) # -> []
#
def recursive_remove_none(d):
    if issubclass(type(d), dict):
        new_dict = {}
        for key in d.keys():
            if not (d[key] is None):
                new_dict[key] = recursive_remove_none(d[key])
        return new_dict
    elif issubclass(type(d), list):
        new_list = []
        for e in d: 
            if not (e is None):
                new_list.append(recursive_remove_none(e))
        return new_list
    else: 
        return d       

json_dict = recursive_skip_dict_key_level(json_dict, "item")
json_dict = recursive_remove_none(json_dict)

to interpret any "item" XML-elements as lists.