Scripting
elembic has several utilities for using elements in scripting.
The main utility is e.data and its helpers, which provide most or all data known to elembic about a custom element, an element instance, a custom type, and so on. This is explained in more detail in "Fields and reflection".
However, there are other useful functions, such as e.query to query element instances.
In addition, e.get is the main way to introspect the style chain and read the latest values defined through set rules.
To compare element instances for equality, especially if you're a package author, use e.eq, as described in "Fields and reflection".