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I have an eye-tracker uses TCP/IP communication and XML to send data between client (application) and server (eye-tracker). The following is an example of the XML data string I receive continuously while the eye-tracker is on. What I would like to do is be able to use the data, FPOGX and FPOGY, as an input to another function I have. The problem is they are not variables and you can't just simply call upon them. How do I parse this data stream? This is the first time I've worked with XML. Examples would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

CLIENT SEND: <SET ID="ENABLE_SEND_COUNTER" STATE="1" />
SERVER SEND: <ACK ID="ENABLE_SEND_COUNTER" STATE="1" />
CLIENT SEND: <SET ID="ENABLE_SEND_POG_FIX" STATE="1" />
SERVER SEND: <ACK ID="ENABLE_SEND_POG_FIX" STATE="1" />
CLIENT SEND: <SET ID="ENABLE_SEND_DATA" STATE="1" />
SERVER SEND: <ACK ID="ENABLE_SEND_DATA" STATE="1" />
SERVER SEND: <REC CNT="72" FPOGX="0.5065" FPOGY="0.4390"
FPOGD="0.078" FPOGID="468" FPOGV="1"/>
SERVER SEND: <REC CNT="73" FPOGX="0.5071" FPOGY="0.4409"
FPOGD="0.094" FPOGID="468" FPOGV="1"/>
SERVER SEND: <REC CNT="74" FPOGX="0.5077" FPOGY="0.4428"
FPOGD="0.109" FPOGID="468" FPOGV="1"/>
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Assuming you don't need to parse all of the text above (which is not properly xml when taken all together) but rather just a single xml element at a time, I would suggest trying something like the following. You will end up with a dictionary of attributes, which contain the key/value pairs you are after.

>>> import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET
>>> xml_string = '<REC CNT="72" FPOGX="0.5065" FPOGY="0.4390" FPOGD="0.078" FPOGID="468" FPOGV="1"/>'
>>> xml = ET.fromstring(xml_string)
>>> xml.attrib  # a dict
{'CNT': '72', 'FPOGV': '1', 'FPOGY': '0.4390', 'FPOGX': '0.5065', 'FPOGD': '0.078', 'FPOGID': '468'}
>>> xml.attrib['FPOGX'], xml.attrib['FPOGY']
('0.5065', '0.4390')

You can check out the documentation for xml.etree.ElementTree here.

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