Prototype for python?
Question: I just learned Prototype for Javascript. It's super convenient: using the $
shortcut, accessing xml elements is not painful any more!

The question: is there a Prototype-like extension for Python?


Answer: Python has [lxml](http://codespeak.net/lxml/) which has the `xpath` method
wherein you could use xpath expressions to select elements. As I understand
it, $ in prototype searches and returns an element that has a particular id,
in which case could be translated in xpath to `*[@id=<someid>]` like so:

    
    
    >>> import lxml.etree
    >>> tree = lxml.etree.XML("<root><a id='1'/><b id='2'/></root>")
    >>> tree.xpath("*[@id=1]")
    [<Element a at c3bc30>]
    >>> lxml.etree.tostring(tree.xpath("*[@id=1]")[0])
    '<a id="1"/>'
    

I think the Python standard library includes support for a subset of xpath in
ElementTree too so you might be able to implement that there somehow if you do
not wish to install lxml (which isn't included in stdlib)...

