This is a follow-up of the thread about obtaining the XML data file from the W|A server. This discussion shows the detailed implementation of the API documentation with Python. 

Use the following code (just need this part from the code through the link) to load the sample XML (a developer ID/appid is required to obtain the xml file. The XML file is not provided within this thread). You can run this code line by line from the python interactive interface (I use python 2.7)The result should be similar to the below. You can simply highlight and copy the print from <?xml ... > to </queryresult> (end of the xml data)  in terminal and paste it into your own file "~/test.xml" (create it by "$ nano ~/test.xml").  

To analyze the infomation in this xml file in any other Python session, you will need to import it from the "test.xml" (if you want to use it directly within the session you can use the ElementTree.fromstring method). Use the parse() method to create a tree-like data struction in python, which you can manipuate later. To check what is in the root object, you can use the tag method to get the first level children of the root: ("ele" means element)

Each list represents the attribution list of this pair: <pod attrib > </pod> . For instance: Use the dictionary key to find the title of a particular node/pod: The ouput result of this pod is hidden in the <plaintext> wrapper, which is under a <subpod> wrapper. Therefore we <plaintext> is just the grandson of the <pod>, root[1]I suggest the subrouting to extract the information of a child node in case of duplication: then use the "latestTrade" as root for the subTree. Go down two levels to reach <plaintext>Notice that I append [0] to "latestTrade" token because each "[ele ... ]" returns a list object in python and index variable is to dereference the first item.
Python offers a better flow control to the demonstrative code via nested iterable object. Here is a simple implementation: Each element in the "res" is a 2D array of 'title' and 'value' pair. I prefer to use the dictionary object to save result if no duplicated pod title. Otherwise make a list as the value to the given key. It is very simple to get the value of any given title/key: The Wolfram Alpha engine provides not only a rich pool of data but also an elegant set of controls to customize the ouput. For instance, the hightlight parts below including "Assumption" and More/Less toggle. You are able to switch to a different representation or knowledge domain via the API as well.

Take the More/Less toggle as an example.
First, you will need to find the pod state of this entry from the XML file. This piece of information usually hides in the <state> wrapper, a child node of <pod> and a sister node of <subpod>. Use a similar subroutine to that for <plaintext>, you can extract all but every states, not limited to our example: Once you print out the list of status, you can just pick up one and use "urllib.urlencode" function to create a valid query: If you want to specify more than one pod state, you may not directly put them into "url_params" list above in the dictionary form. Because the dictionary object does not allow duplicated key, items with the same key are discarded but the last one. Instead you can use iteration with string manipuation to append the pod states to the target. For instance: where the function f is defined as You should be able to handshake with the WA server and obtain a new piece of XML data containing more detailed data for GOOG stock in terms of the 'Latest trade' and 'Price history' Result comparison
1. < plaintext > in the new xml has one more "open" price
2. <states> has the attribute <count = 2> instead of 1 in the old xml file. This action creates a dynamic update of the controls on the web interface as well: after you click the more button in the "Latest trade" pod, the button splits into two more buttons. 

Sometimes not all data are available through API. In this paticular pod, you can see another "More" button after you click it for the first time. To get the second level of expansion, you can put a "n@" in front of the "Quote__more" option. Reload the urlopen you will have more entries such as rows for ask and bid.

I will leave the assumption part as your practice problem if you want to command more for query techniques using Python. If you have any idea and want to comment, feel free to write it down below.