Have you looked at python's SAX API?

http://docs.python.o...xml.sax.handler

Check out the xml.sax.ContentHandler class, which provides (among other things) the startElement method. This method is called when the parser encounters -- you guessed it -- a start tag. The name of the tag is provided in the 'name' parameter. Here is the method signature.

ContentHandler.startElement(name, attrs)

The following is quoted straight from the documentation...

"The name parameter contains the raw XML 1.0 name of the element type as a string and the attrs parameter holds an object of the Attributes interface..."

Take a look and let us know if you have any specific questions.

Thank you for your clear,concise, and knowledgeable explanation. You've inspired me to continue on to section 1.2!