Convert and return the :class:`~xml.etree.ElementTree.Element` for the XML document *x*. If *x* is already an :class:`~xml.etree.ElementTree.Element` simply returns that.

def to_ele(x):
    "Convert and return the :class:`~xml.etree.ElementTree.Element` for the XML document *x*. If *x* is already an :class:`~xml.etree.ElementTree.Element` simply returns that."
    if sys.version < '3':
        return x if etree.iselement(x) else etree.fromstring(x, parser=parser)
    else:
        return x if etree.iselement(x) else etree.fromstring(x.encode('UTF-8'), parser=parser)