code: def parse(url_or_path, encoding=None, handler_class=DrillHandler):
      
      handler = handler_class()
      parser = expat.ParserCreate(encoding)
      parser.buffer_text = 1
      parser.StartElementHandler = handler.start_element
      parser.EndElementHandler = handler.end_element
      parser.CharacterDataHandler = handler.characters
      if isinstance(url_or_path, basestring):
          if '://' in url_or_path[:20]:
              with contextlib.closing(url_lib.urlopen(url_or_path)) as f:
                  parser.ParseFile(f)
          elif url_or_path[:100].strip().startswith('<'):
              if isinstance(url_or_path, unicode):
                  if encoding is None:
                      encoding = 'utf-8'
                  url_or_path = url_or_path.encode(encoding)
              parser.Parse(url_or_path, True)
          else:
              with open(url_or_path, 'rb') as f:
                  parser.ParseFile(f)
      elif PY3 and isinstance(url_or_path, bytes):
          parser.ParseFile(bytes_io(url_or_path))
      else:
          parser.ParseFile(url_or_path)
      return handler.root
docs: :param url_or_path: A file-like object, a filesystem path, a URL, or a string containing XML
      :rtype: :class:`XmlElement`