def _get_node_value(nod):
    """XML parsing helper for extracting text value from an ElementTree Element. No error checking performed.

    Parameters
    ----------
    nod : ElementTree.Element
        the xml dom element

    Returns
    -------
    str
        the string value of the node.
    """

    if nod.text is None:
        return None

    val = nod.text.strip()
    if len(val) == 0:
        return None
    else:
        return val