from xml.etree.ElementTree import Element

def dict_to_xml(tag, d):
'''
Turn a simple dict of key/value pairs into XML
'''
elem = Element(tag)
for key, val in d.items():
  child = Element(key)
  child.text = str(val)
  elem.append(child)
return elem

> s = { 'name': 'GOOG', 'shares': 100, 'price':490.1 }
> e = dict_to_xml('stock', s)
> e
<Element 'stock' at 0x1004b64c8>
>

> from xml.etree.ElementTree import tostring
> tostring(e)
b'<stock><price>490.1</price><shares>100</shares><name>GOOG</name></stock>'
>

> e.set('_id','1234')
> tostring(e)
b'<stock _id="1234"><price>490.1</price><shares>100</shares><name>GOOG</name>
</stock>'
>

def dict_to_xml_str(tag, d):
  '''
  Turn a simple dict of key/value pairs into XML
  '''
  parts = ['<{}>'.format(tag)]
  for key, val in d.items():
    parts.append('<{0}>{1}</{0}>'.format(key,val))
  parts.append('</{}>'.format(tag))
  return ''.join(parts)

> d = { 'name' : '<spam>' }

> # String creation
> dict_to_xml_str('item',d)
'<item><name><spam></name></item>'

> # Proper XML creation
> e = dict_to_xml('item',d)
> tostring(e)
b'<item><name>&lt;spam&gt;</name></item>'
>

> from xml.sax.saxutils import escape, unescape
> escape('<spam>')
'&lt;spam&gt;'
> unescape(_)
'<spam>'
>