# 8.13 `xml.etree.ElementTree` -- The ElementTree XML API

New in version 2.5.

The Element type is a flexible container object, designed to store hierarchical data structures in memory. The type can be described as a cross between a list and a dictionary.

Each element has a number of properties associated with it:

- a tag which is a string identifying what kind of data this element represents (the element type, in other words).
- a number of attributes, stored in a Python dictionary.
- a text string.
- an optional tail string.
- a number of child elements, stored in a Python sequence

To create an element instance, use the Element or SubElement factory functions.

The `ElementTree` class can be used to wrap an element structure, and convert it from and to XML.

A C implementation of this API is available as `xml.etree.cElementTree`.