access ElementTree node parent node

There's no direct support in the form of a parent attribute, but you can perhaps use the patterns described here to achieve the desired effect. The following one-liner is suggested (updated from the linked-to post to Python 3.8) to create a child-to-parent mapping for a whole tree, using the method xml.etree.ElementTree.Element.iter:

parent_map = {c: p for p in tree.iter() for c in p}

Vinay's answer should still work, but for Python 2.7+ and 3.2+ the following is recommended:

parent_map = {c:p for p in tree.iter() for c in p}

getiterator() is deprecated in favor of iter(), and it's nice to use the new dict list comprehension constructor.

Secondly, while constructing an XML document, it is possible that a child will have multiple parents, although this gets removed once you serialize the document. If that matters, you might try this:

parent_map = {}for p in tree.iter():    for c in p:        if c in parent_map:            parent_map[c].append(p)            # Or raise, if you don't want to allow this.        else:            parent_map[c] = [p]            # Or parent_map[c] = p if you don't want to allow this

You can use xpath ... notation in ElementTree.

<parent>     <child id="123">data1</child></parent>xml.findall('.//child[@id="123"]...')>> [<Element 'parent'>]