>>> import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET
>>> tree = ET.parse('test.xml')
>>> root = tree.getroot()
>>> dir(root)
['!__reduce__', '__class__', '__copy__', '__deepcopy__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'find', 'findall', 'findtext', 'get', 'getchildren', 'getiterator', 'insert', 'items', 'keys', 'makeelement', 'remove', 'set']
>>> root.tag
'{http://testnamespace}root'

The tag property is not listed in dir() making ElementTree more difficult to use for those of us with poor memories.

Confirmed.

As a workaround, the Python implementation shows its attributes "tag", "text", "tail", "attrib".

Since upstream version of ElementTree drops support for Python < 2.3, we may refactor the Element type, and use the "tp_members" and "tp_getset" slots.

Attached a patch with test for this:

Following the suggestion, I put "tag", "text", "tail", and "attrib" to be accessible via tp_getset for _etree.Element type.

Is this a right approach? I converted the hard-coded "attributes" into real, C-API attributes.

It looks right to me, but I would include more verbose pydoc strings.

IE, "The tail attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with the element" tells me nothing. You could explain here what .tail actually is, a few XML examples of what would be put in tail or what tail would become, and the API design reason why tail is used in addition to text.

Could you please refresh the patch for Python 3.3 and 3.4 (_elementtree went through many changes in 3.3)?

Here is a patch updated to 3.6.

The patch looks technically good, though I’m not a big fan of the double underscores, like element_get__text(). Maybe element_text_getter() instead, because it has to match the “getter” signature?

Personally, I would say keep the doc strings basic. If you want to add more depth about “tail”, I suggest to keep it to the main RST documentation (which was updated fairly recently). But it would be good to quickly distinguish text and tail other than by name. Maybe:

{"text", ..., "A string of text directly after the start tag, or None"},
{"tail", ..., "A string of text directly after the end tag, or None"},

New changeset fef7f041c1a7 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-7990: dir() on ElementTree.Element now lists properties: "tag",
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/fef7f041c1a7

Thank you Martin. Committed with both your suggestions.