how to read an lxml.objectify.ObjectifiedElement object with django-piston?

I am trying to make a django-piston API which reads another API and presents it in a different format (reads an XML-only API and presents it in JSON). But I am having trouble, because the way I am doing it I just an empty string.

Here is my handler:

class MyHandler(BaseHandler):
methods_allowed = ('GET')

def read(self, request, my_argument):

    my_node = get_node(my_argument)
    return my_node

The get_node function is just a function which gets the object from the other API, a开发者_StackOverflow中文版nd that is an lxml object:

In [27]: type(my_node)
Out[27]: <type 'lxml.objectify.ObjectifiedElement'>

In my urls.py I have:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from piston.resource import Resource
from api.handlers import MyHandler

class CsrfExemptResource( Resource ):
    def __init__( self, handler, authentication = None ):
        super( CsrfExemptResource, self ).__init__( handler, authentication )
        self.csrf_exempt = getattr( self.handler, 'csrf_exempt', True )

my_resource = CsrfExemptResource( MyHandler )

urlpatterns = patterns( '',
    url( r'^api/(?P<my_argument>.*)/$', my_resource ),
)

And when I visit that URL (with the right argument, which given directly to get_node gives a correct object), I just get an empty string.

How to make it work?

---

It depends on what you need from that lxml.objectify.ObjectifiedElement. If you want to get the text content from that element you can access it via

my_node.text

If you want an attribute value you can access it via:

my_node.attrib['nameofattribute']