How do convert a pandas dataframe to XML?

You can create a function that creates the item node from a row in your DataFrame:

def func(row):
    xml = ['<item>']
    for field in row.index:
        xml.append('  <field name="{0}">{1}</field>'.format(field, row[field]))
    xml.append('</item>')
    return '\n'.join(xml)

And then apply the function along the axis=1.

>>> print '\n'.join(df.apply(func, axis=1))
<item>
  <field name="field_1">cat</field>
  <field name="field_2">15,263</field>
  <field name="field_3">2.52</field>
  <field name="field_4">00:03:00</field>
</item>
<item>
  <field name="field_1">dog</field>
  <field name="field_2">1,652</field>
  <field name="field_3">3.71</field>
  <field name="field_4">00:03:47</field>
</item>
...