Use your own XML parsing library

Since version 0.2.3 you no longer need to use lxml.objectify. A custom response processor can be defined using any mechanism you like. For instance, here is one using xml.minidom:

import xml.dom.minidom
def minidom_response_parser(fp):
    root = xml.dom.minidom.parse(fp)
    # parse errors
    for error in root.getElementsByTagName('Error'):
        code = error.getElementsByTagName('Code')[0].firstChild.nodeValue
        msg = error.getElementsByTagName('Message')[0].firstChild.nodeValue
            raise AWSError(code, msg)
        return root

# Now let's use this instead of the default one
api = API(AWS_KEY, SECRET_KEY, 'uk', processor=minidom_response_parser)
root = api.item_lookup('0718155157')
print root.toprettyxml()
# ...

Note

Make sure your response parser raises an AWSError with the appropriate error code and message.