Getting Sub-Elements

## This scrap of code uses the ElementTree's 'Element' type.  It defines a function that checks if
## the provided element contains sub-elements (the list(element) phrase) and then returns all of the
## sub elements of each of the sub elements of the provided element.  Put your hands up if you've used
## the word element too many times already.  It returns the elements in dictionary form, so that my
## previously-made dictionary in the getShard() method can be update()d with the results from this function.

def getSubElements(element):
    if list(element):
        return [getSubElements(i) for i in list(element)]
    else:
        return {element.tag: element.text}