Xml Parsing Using Python
xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API …
Source code: Lib/xml/etree/
The module implements a simple and efficient API
for parsing and creating XML data.
Changed in version 3. 3: This module will use a fast implementation whenever available.
Deprecated since version 3. 3: The module is deprecated.
Warning
The module is not secure against
maliciously constructed data. If you need to parse untrusted or
unauthenticated data see XML vulnerabilities.
Tutorial¶
This is a short tutorial for using (ET in
short). The goal is to demonstrate some of the building blocks and basic
concepts of the module.
XML tree and elements¶
XML is an inherently hierarchical data format, and the most natural way to
represent it is with a tree. ET has two classes for this purpose –
ElementTree represents the whole XML document as a tree, and
Element represents a single node in this tree. Interactions with
the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are usually done
on the ElementTree level. Interactions with a single XML element
and its sub-elements are done on the Element level.
Parsing XML¶
We’ll be using the following XML document as the sample data for this section:
We can import this data by reading from a file:
import as ET
tree = (”)
root = troot()
Or directly from a string:
root = omstring(country_data_as_string)
fromstring() parses XML from a string directly into an Element,
which is the root element of the parsed tree. Other parsing functions may
create an ElementTree. Check the documentation to be sure.
As an Element, root has a tag and a dictionary of attributes:
>>>
‘data’
{}
It also has children nodes over which we can iterate:
>>> for child in root:… print(, )…
country {‘name’: ‘Liechtenstein’}
country {‘name’: ‘Singapore’}
country {‘name’: ‘Panama’}
Children are nested, and we can access specific child nodes by index:
>>> root[0][1]
‘2008’
Note
Not all elements of the XML input will end up as elements of the
parsed tree. Currently, this module skips over any XML comments,
processing instructions, and document type declarations in the
input. Nevertheless, trees built using this module’s API rather
than parsing from XML text can have comments and processing
instructions in them; they will be included when generating XML
output. A document type declaration may be accessed by passing a
custom TreeBuilder instance to the XMLParser
constructor.
Pull API for non-blocking parsing¶
Most parsing functions provided by this module require the whole document
to be read at once before returning any result. It is possible to use an
XMLParser and feed data into it incrementally, but it is a push API that
calls methods on a callback target, which is too low-level and inconvenient for
most needs. Sometimes what the user really wants is to be able to parse XML
incrementally, without blocking operations, while enjoying the convenience of
fully constructed Element objects.
The most powerful tool for doing this is XMLPullParser. It does not
require a blocking read to obtain the XML data, and is instead fed with data
incrementally with () calls. To get the parsed XML
elements, call ad_events(). Here is an example:
>>> parser = ET. XMLPullParser([‘start’, ‘end’])
>>> (‘
>>> list(ad_events())
[(‘start’,
>>> (‘ more text
>>> for event, elem in ad_events():… print(event)… print(, ‘text=’, )…
end
The obvious use case is applications that operate in a non-blocking fashion
where the XML data is being received from a socket or read incrementally from
some storage device. In such cases, blocking reads are unacceptable.
Because it’s so flexible, XMLPullParser can be inconvenient to use for
simpler use-cases. If you don’t mind your application blocking on reading XML
data but would still like to have incremental parsing capabilities, take a look
at iterparse(). It can be useful when you’re reading a large XML document
and don’t want to hold it wholly in memory.
Finding interesting elements¶
Element has some useful methods that help iterate recursively over all
the sub-tree below it (its children, their children, and so on). For example,
():
>>> for neighbor in (‘neighbor’):… print()…
{‘name’: ‘Austria’, ‘direction’: ‘E’}
{‘name’: ‘Switzerland’, ‘direction’: ‘W’}
{‘name’: ‘Malaysia’, ‘direction’: ‘N’}
{‘name’: ‘Costa Rica’, ‘direction’: ‘W’}
{‘name’: ‘Colombia’, ‘direction’: ‘E’}
ndall() finds only elements with a tag which are direct
children of the current element. () finds the first child
with a particular tag, and accesses the element’s text
content. () accesses the element’s attributes:
>>> for country in ndall(‘country’):… rank = (‘rank’)… name = (‘name’)… print(name, rank)…
Liechtenstein 1
Singapore 4
Panama 68
More sophisticated specification of which elements to look for is possible by
using XPath.
Modifying an XML File¶
ElementTree provides a simple way to build XML documents and write them to files.
The () method serves this purpose.
Once created, an Element object may be manipulated by directly changing
its fields (such as), adding and modifying attributes
(() method), as well as adding new children (for example
with ()).
Let’s say we want to add one to each country’s rank, and add an updated
attribute to the rank element:
>>> for rank in (‘rank’):… new_rank = int() + 1… = str(new_rank)… (‘updated’, ‘yes’)…
>>> (”)
Our XML now looks like this:
We can remove elements using (). Let’s say we want to
remove all countries with a rank higher than 50:
>>> for country in ndall(‘country’):… # using ndall() to avoid removal during traversal… rank = int((‘rank’))… if rank > 50:… (country)…
Note that concurrent modification while iterating can lead to problems,
just like when iterating and modifying Python lists or dicts.
Therefore, the example first collects all matching elements with
ndall(), and only then iterates over the list of matches.
Building XML documents¶
The SubElement() function also provides a convenient way to create new
sub-elements for a given element:
>>> a = ET. Element(‘a’)
>>> b = bElement(a, ‘b’)
>>> c = bElement(a, ‘c’)
>>> d = bElement(c, ‘d’)
>>> (a)
Parsing XML with Namespaces¶
If the XML input has namespaces, tags and attributes
with prefixes in the form prefix:sometag get expanded to
{uri}sometag where the prefix is replaced by the full URI.
Also, if there is a default namespace,
that full URI gets prepended to all of the non-prefixed tags.
Here is an XML example that incorporates two namespaces, one with the
prefix “fictional” and the other serving as the default namespace:
By default, the href attribute is treated as a file name. You can use custom loaders to override this behaviour. Also note that the standard helper does not support XPointer syntax.
To process this file, load it as usual, and pass the root element to the module:
from import ElementTree, ElementInclude
tree = (“”)
clude(root)
The ElementInclude module replaces the {include element with the root element from the document. The result might look something like this:
To include a text document, use the {include element, and set the parse attribute to “text”:
Copyright (c)
The result might look something like:
Copyright (c) 2003.
(href, parse, encoding=None)¶
Default loader. This default loader reads an included resource from disk. href is a URL.
parse is for parse mode either “xml” or “text”. encoding
is an optional text encoding. If not given, encoding is utf-8. Returns the
expanded resource. If the parse mode is “xml”, this is an ElementTree
instance. If the parse mode is “text”, this is a Unicode string. If the
loader fails, it can return None or raise an exception.
(elem, loader=None, base_url=None, max_depth=6)¶
This function expands XInclude directives. elem is the root element. loader is
an optional resource loader. If omitted, it defaults to default_loader().
If given, it should be a callable that implements the same interface as
default_loader(). base_url is base URL of the original file, to resolve
relative include file references. max_depth is the maximum number of recursive
inclusions. Limited to reduce the risk of malicious content explosion. Pass a
negative value to disable the limitation.
Returns the expanded resource. If the parse mode is
“xml”, this is an ElementTree instance. If the parse mode is “text”,
this is a Unicode string. If the loader fails, it can return None or
raise an exception.
New in version 3. 9: The base_url and max_depth parameters.
Element Objects¶
class (tag, attrib={}, **extra)¶
Element class. This class defines the Element interface, and provides a
reference implementation of this interface.
bytestrings or Unicode strings. tag is the element name. attrib is
an optional dictionary, containing element attributes. extra contains
additional attributes, given as keyword arguments.
tag¶
A string identifying what kind of data this element represents (the
element type, in other words).
text¶
tail¶
These attributes can be used to hold additional data associated with
the element. Their values are usually strings but may be any
application-specific object. If the element is created from
an XML file, the text attribute holds either the text between
the element’s start tag and its first child or end tag, or None, and
the tail attribute holds either the text between the element’s
end tag and the next tag, or None. For the XML data
1
the a element has None for both text and tail attributes,
the b element has text “1” and tail “4”,
the c element has text “2” and tail None,
and the d element has text None and tail “3”.
To collect the inner text of an element, see itertext(), for
example “”(ertext()).
Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.
attrib¶
A dictionary containing the element’s attributes. Note that while the
attrib value is always a real mutable Python dictionary, an ElementTree
implementation may choose to use another internal representation, and
create the dictionary only if someone asks for it. To take advantage of
such implementations, use the dictionary methods below whenever possible.
The following dictionary-like methods work on the element attributes.
clear()¶
Resets an element. This function removes all subelements, clears all
attributes, and sets the text and tail attributes to None.
get(key, default=None)¶
Gets the element attribute named key.
Returns the attribute value, or default if the attribute was not found.
items()¶
Returns the element attributes as a sequence of (name, value) pairs. The
attributes are returned in an arbitrary order.
keys()¶
Returns the elements attribute names as a list. The names are returned
in an arbitrary order.
set(key, value)¶
Set the attribute key on the element to value.
The following methods work on the element’s children (subelements).
append(subelement)¶
Adds the element subelement to the end of this element’s internal list
of subelements. Raises TypeError if subelement is not an
Element.
extend(subelements)¶
Appends subelements from a sequence object with zero or more elements.
Raises TypeError if a subelement is not an Element.
find(match, namespaces=None)¶
Finds the first subelement matching match. match may be a tag name
or a path. Returns an element instance
or None. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix
to full name. Pass ” as prefix to move all unprefixed tag names
in the expression into the given namespace.
findall(match, namespaces=None)¶
Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or
path. Returns a list containing all matching
elements in document order. namespaces is an optional mapping from
namespace prefix to full name. Pass ” as prefix to move all
unprefixed tag names in the expression into the given namespace.
findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)¶
Finds text for the first subelement matching match. match may be
a tag name or a path. Returns the text content
of the first matching element, or default if no element was found.
Note that if the matching element has no text content an empty string
is returned. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix
insert(index, subelement)¶
Inserts subelement at the given position in this element. Raises
TypeError if subelement is not an Element.
iter(tag=None)¶
Creates a tree iterator with the current element as the root.
The iterator iterates over this element and all elements below it, in
document (depth first) order. If tag is not None or ‘*’, only
elements whose tag equals tag are returned from the iterator. If the
tree structure is modified during iteration, the result is undefined.
iterfind(match, namespaces=None)¶
path. Returns an iterable yielding all
matching elements in document order. namespaces is an optional mapping
from namespace prefix to full name.
itertext()¶
Creates a text iterator. The iterator loops over this element and all
subelements, in document order, and returns all inner text.
makeelement(tag, attrib)¶
Creates a new element object of the same type as this element. Do not
call this method, use the SubElement() factory function instead.
remove(subelement)¶
Removes subelement from the element. Unlike the find* methods this
method compares elements based on the instance identity, not on tag value
or contents.
Element objects also support the following sequence type methods
for working with subelements: __delitem__(),
__getitem__(), __setitem__(),
__len__().
Caution: Elements with no subelements will test as False. This behavior
will change in future versions. Use specific len(elem) or elem is
None test instead.
element = (‘foo’)
if not element: # careful!
print(“element not found, or element has no subelements”)
if element is None:
print(“element not found”)
Prior to Python 3. 8, the serialisation order of the XML attributes of
elements was artificially made predictable by sorting the attributes by
their name. Based on the now guaranteed ordering of dicts, this arbitrary
reordering was removed in Python 3. 8 to preserve the order in which
attributes were originally parsed or created by user code.
In general, user code should try not to depend on a specific ordering of
attributes, given that the XML Information Set explicitly excludes the attribute
order from conveying information. Code should be prepared to deal with
any ordering on input. In cases where deterministic XML output is required,
e. for cryptographic signing or test data sets, canonical serialisation
is available with the canonicalize() function.
In cases where canonical output is not applicable but a specific attribute
order is still desirable on output, code should aim for creating the
attributes directly in the desired order, to avoid perceptual mismatches
for readers of the code. In cases where this is difficult to achieve, a
recipe like the following can be applied prior to serialisation to enforce
an order independently from the Element creation:
def reorder_attributes(root):
for el in ():
attrib =
if len(attrib) > 1:
# adjust attribute order, e. by sorting
attribs = sorted(())
()
(attribs)
ElementTree Objects¶
class (element=None, file=None)¶
ElementTree wrapper class. This class represents an entire element
hierarchy, and adds some extra support for serialization to and from
standard XML.
element is the root element. The tree is initialized with the contents
of the XML file if given.
_setroot(element)¶
Replaces the root element for this tree. This discards the current
contents of the tree, and replaces it with the given element. Use with
care. element is an element instance.
Same as (), starting at the root of the tree.
Same as ndall(), starting at the root of the tree.
Same as ndtext(), starting at the root of the tree.
getroot()¶
Returns the root element for this tree.
Creates and returns a tree iterator for the root element. The iterator
loops over all elements in this tree, in section order. tag is the tag
to look for (default is to return all elements).
Same as erfind(), starting at the root of the tree.
parse(source, parser=None)¶
Loads an external XML section into this element tree. source is a file
name or file object. parser is an optional parser instance.
If not given, the standard XMLParser parser is used. Returns the
section root element.
write(file, encoding=”us-ascii”, xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, method=”xml”, *, short_empty_elements=True)¶
Writes the element tree to a file, as XML. file is a file name, or a
file object opened for writing. encoding 1 is the output
encoding (default is US-ASCII).
xml_declaration controls if an XML declaration should be added to the
file. Use False for never, True for always, None
for only if not US-ASCII or UTF-8 or Unicode (default is None).
default_namespace sets the default XML namespace (for “xmlns”).
method is either “xml”, “html” or “text” (default is
“xml”).
The keyword-only short_empty_elements parameter controls the formatting
of elements that contain no content. If True (the default), they are
emitted as a single self-closed tag, otherwise they are emitted as a pair
of start/end tags.
The output is either a string (str) or binary (bytes).
This is controlled by the encoding argument. If encoding is
“unicode”, the output is a string; otherwise, it’s binary. Note that
this may conflict with the type of file if it’s an open
file object; make sure you do not try to write a string to a
binary stream and vice versa.
Changed in version 3. 8: The write() method now preserves the attribute order specified
This is the XML file that is going to be manipulated:
Example of changing the attribute “target” of every link in first paragraph:
>>> from import ElementTree
>>> tree = ElementTree()
>>> (“”)
>>> p = (“body/p”) # Finds first occurrence of tag p in body
>>> p
>>> links = list((“a”)) # Returns list of all links
>>> links
[
>>> for i in links: # Iterates through all found links… [“target”] = “blank”
QName Objects¶
class (text_or_uri, tag=None)¶
QName wrapper. This can be used to wrap a QName attribute value, in order
to get proper namespace handling on output. text_or_uri is a string
containing the QName value, in the form {uri}local, or, if the tag argument
is given, the URI part of a QName. If tag is given, the first argument is
interpreted as a URI, and this argument is interpreted as a local name.
QN
XML parsing in Python – GeeksforGeeks
This article focuses on how one can parse a given XML file and extract some useful data out of it in a structured XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It was designed to store and transport data. It was designed to be both human- and ’s why, the design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability across the XML file to be parsed in this tutorial is actually a RSS RSS(Rich Site Summary, often called Really Simple Syndication) uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated informationlike blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. RSS is XML formatted plain RSS format itself is relatively easy to read both by automated processes and by humans RSS processed in this tutorial is the RSS feed of top news stories from a popular news website. You can check it out here. Our goal is to process this RSS feed (or XML file) and save it in some other format for future Module used: This article will focus on using inbuilt xml module in python for parsing XML and the main focus will be on the ElementTree XML API of this plementation:import csvimport requestsimport as ETdef loadRSS(): resp = (url) with open(”, ‘wb’) as f: (ntent)def parseXML(xmlfile): tree = (xmlfile) root = troot() newsitems = [] for item in ndall(‘. /channel/item’): news = {} for child in item: news[‘media’] = [‘url’] else: news[] = (‘utf8’) (news) return newsitemsdef savetoCSV(newsitems, filename): fields = [‘guid’, ‘title’, ‘pubDate’, ‘description’, ‘link’, ‘media’] with open(filename, ‘w’) as csvfile: writer = csv. DictWriter(csvfile, fieldnames = fields) writer. writeheader() writer. writerows(newsitems)def main(): loadRSS() newsitems = parseXML(”) savetoCSV(newsitems, ”)if __name__ == “__main__”: main()Above code will:Load RSS feed from specified URL and save it as an XML the XML file to save news as a list of dictionaries where each dictionary is a single news the news items into a CSV us try to understand the code in pieces:Loading and saving RSS feeddef loadRSS():
# url of rss feed
url = ”
# creating HTTP response object from given url
resp = (url)
# saving the xml file
with open(”, ‘wb’) as f:
(ntent)Here, we first created a HTTP response object by sending an HTTP request to the URL of the RSS feed. The content of response now contains the XML file data which we save as in our local more insight on how requests module works, follow this article:GET and POST requests using PythonParsing XMLWe have created parseXML() function to parse XML file. We know that XML is an inherently hierarchical data format, and the most natural way to represent it is with a tree. Look at the image below for example:Here, we are using (call it ET, in short) module. Element Tree has two classes for this purpose – ElementTree represents the whole XMLdocument as a tree, and Element represents a single node in this tree. Interactions with the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are usually done on the ElementTree level. Interactions with a single XML element and its sub-elements are done on the Element, so let’s go through the parseXML() function now:tree = (xmlfile)Here, we create an ElementTree object by parsing the passed = troot()getroot() function return the root of tree as an Element item in ndall(‘. /channel/item’):Now, once you have taken a look at the structure of your XML file, you will notice that we are interested only in item element.. /channel/item is actually XPath syntax (XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document). Here, we want to find all item grand-children of channel children of the root(denoted by ‘. ’) can read more about supported XPath syntax item in ndall(‘. /channel/item’):
# empty news dictionary
news = {}
# iterate child elements of item
for child in item:
# special checking for namespace object content:media
if == ‘{content’:
news[‘media’] = [‘url’]
else:
news[] = (‘utf8’)
# append news dictionary to news items list
(news)Now, we know that we are iterating through item elements where each item element contains one news. So, we create an empty news dictionary in which we will store all data available about news item. To iterate though each child element of an element, we simply iterate through it, like this:for child in item:Now, notice a sample item element here:We will have to handle namespace tags separately as they get expanded to their original value, when parsed. So, we do something like this:if == ‘{content’:
news[‘media’] = [‘url’] is a dictionary of all the attributes related to an element. Here, we are interested in url attribute of media:content namespace, for all other children, we simply do:news[] = (‘utf8’) contains the name of child element. stores all the text inside that child element. So, finally, a sample item element is converted to a dictionary and looks like this:{‘description’: ‘Ignis has a tough competition already, from Hyun….,
‘guid’: ‘….,
‘link’: ‘….,
‘media’: ‘…,
‘pubDate’: ‘Thu, 12 Jan 2017 12:33:04 GMT ‘,
‘title’: ‘Maruti Ignis launches on Jan 13: Five cars that threa….. }Then, we simply append this dict element to the list nally, this list is data to a CSV fileNow, we simply save the list of news items to a CSV file so that it could be used or modified easily in future using savetoCSV() function. To know more about writing dictionary elements to a CSV file, go through this article:Working with CSV files in PythonSo now, here is how our formatted data looks like now:As you can see, the hierarchical XML file data has been converted to a simple CSV file so that all news stories are stored in form of a table. This makes it easier to extend the database, one can use the JSON-like data directly in their applications! This is the best alternative for extracting data from websites which do not provide a public API but provide some RSS the code and files used in above article can be found next? You can have a look at more rss feeds of the news website used in above example. You can try to create an extended version of above example by parsing other rss feeds you a cricket fan? Then this rss feed must be of your interest! You can parse this XML file to scrape information about the live cricket matches and use to make a desktop notifier! Quiz of HTML and XMLThis article is contributed by Nikhil Kumar. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article and mail your article to See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above
Python XML Parser Tutorial | ElementTree and Minidom Parsing
We often require to parse data written in different languages. Python provides numerous libraries to parse or split data written in other languages. In this Python XML Parser Tutorial, you will learn how to parse XML using are all the topics that are covered in this tutorial:What is XML? Python XML Parsing Modules Module Using parse() function Using fromstring() function Finding Elements of Interest Modifying XML files Adding to XML Deleting from Module Using parse() function Using fromString() function Finding Elements of InterestSo let’s get started. :)What is XML? XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is similar to HTML in its appearance but, XML is used for data presentation, while HTML is used to define what data is being used. XML is exclusively designed to send and receive data back and forth between clients and servers. Take a look at the following example:EXAMPLE:
Two idly’s with chutney
The above example shows the contents of a file which I have named as ‘’ and I will be using the same in this Python XML parser tutorial for all the upcoming XML Parsing ModulesPython allows parsing these XML documents using two modules namely, the module and Minidom (Minimal DOM Implementation). Parsing means to read information from a file and split it into pieces by identifying parts of that particular XML file. Let’s move on further to see how we can use these modules to parse XML Module:This module helps us format XML data in a tree structure which is the most natural representation of hierarchical data. Element type allows storage of hierarchical data structures in memory and has the following properties:PropertyDescriptionTagIt is a string representing the type of data being storedAttributesConsists of a number of attributes stored as dictionariesText StringA text string having information that needs to be displayedTail StringCan also have tail strings if necessaryChild ElementsConsists of a number of child elements stored as sequencesElementTree is a class that wraps the element structure and allows conversion to and from XML. Let us now try to parse the above XML file using python are two ways to parse the file using ‘ElementTree’ module. The first is by using the parse() function and the second is fromstring() function. The parse () function parses XML document which is supplied as a file whereas, fromstring parses XML when supplied as a string i. e within triple parse() function:As mentioned earlier, this function takes XML in file format to parse it. Take a look at the following example:EXAMPLE:import as ET
mytree = (”)
myroot = troot()As you can see, The first thing you will need to do is to import the module. Then, the parse() method parses the ‘’ file. The getroot() method returns the root element of ‘’ you execute the above code, you will not see outputs returned but there will be no errors indicating that the code has executed successfully. To check for the root element, you can simply use the print statement as follows:EXAMPLE:import as ET
myroot = troot()
print(myroot)OUTPUT:
data=”’
”’
myroot = omstring(data)
#print(myroot)
print()The above code will return the same output as the previous one. Please note that the XML document used as a string is just one part of ‘’ which I have used for better visibility. You can use the complete XML document as can also retrieve the root tag by using the ‘tag’ object as follows:EXAMPLE:print()OUTPUT: metadataYou can also slice the tag string output by just specifying which part of the string you want to see in your output. EXAMPLE:print([0:4]) OUTPUT: metaAs mentioned earlier, tags can have dictionary attributes as well. To check if the root tag has any attributes you can use the ‘attrib’ object as follows: EXAMPLE:print()OUTPUT: {}As you can see, the output is an empty dictionary because our root tag has no nding Elements of Interest:The root consists of child tags as well. To retrieve the child of the root tag, you can use the following:EXAMPLE:print(myroot[0])OUTPUT: foodNow, if you want to retrieve all first-child tags of the root, you can iterate over it using the for loop as follows:EXAMPLE:for x in myroot[0]:
print(, )OUTPUT:item {‘name’: ‘breakfast’} price {} description {} calories {}All the items returned are the child attributes and tags of separate out the text from XML using ElementTree, you can make use of the text attribute. For example, in case I want to retrieve all the information about the first food item, I should use the following piece of code:EXAMPLE:for x in myroot[0]:
print()OUTPUT:Idly $2. 5 Two idly’s with chutney 553As you can see, the text information of the first item has been returned as the output. Now if you want to display all the items with their particular price, you can make use of the get() method. This method accesses the element’s attributes. EXAMPLE:for x in ndall(‘food’):
item (‘item’)
price = (‘price’)
print(item, price)OUTPUT:Idly $2. 5 Paper Dosa $2. 7 Upma $3. 65 Bisi Bele Bath $4. 50 Kesari Bath $1. 95The above output shows all the required items along with the price of each of them. Using ElementTree, you can also modify the XML difying XML files:The elements present your XML file can be manipulated. To do this, you can use the set() function. Let us first take a look at how to add something to to XML:The following example shows how you can add something to the description of items. EXAMPLE:for description in (‘description’):
new_desc = str()+’wil be served’
= str(new_desc)
(‘updated’, ‘yes’)
(”)The write() function helps create a new xml file and writes the updated output to the same. However, you can modify the original file as well, using the same function. After executing the above code, you will be able to see a new file has been created with the updated above image shows the modified description of our food items. To add a new subtag, you can make use of the SubElement() method. For example, if you want to add a new specialty tag to the first item Idly, you can do as bElement(myroot[0], ‘speciality’)
for x in (‘speciality’):
new_desc = ‘South Indian Special’
(”)OUTPUT:As you can see, a new tag has been added under the first food tag. You can add tags wherever you want by specifying the subscript within [] brackets. Now let us take a look at how to delete items using this leting from XML:To delete attributes or sub-elements using ElementTree, you can make use of the pop() method. This method will remove the desired attribute or element that is not needed by the user. EXAMPLE:myroot[0][0](‘name’, None)
# create a new XML file with the results
(”)OUTPUT:The above image shows that the name attribute has been removed from the item tag. To remove the complete tag, you can use the same pop() method as follows:EXAMPLE:myroot[0](myroot[0][0])
(”)OUTPUT:The output shows that the first subelement of the food tag has been deleted. In case you want to delete all tags, you can make use of the clear() function as follows:EXAMPLE:myroot[0]()
(”)OUTPUT:When the above code is executed, the first child of food tag will be completely deleted including all the subtags. Till here we have been making use of the module in this Python XML parser tutorial. Now let us take a look at how to parse XML using Module:This module is basically used by people who are proficient with DOM (Document Object module). DOM applications often start by parsing XML into DOM. in, this can be achieved in the following ways:Using the parse() function:The first method is to make use of the parse() function by supplying the XML file to be parsed as a parameter. For example:EXAMPLE:from import minidom
p1 = (“”);Once you execute this, you will be able to split the XML file and fetch the required data. You can also parse an open file using this function. EXAMPLE_dat=open(”)
(dat)The variable storing the opened file is supplied as a parameter to the parse function in this parseString() Method:This method is used when you want to supply the XML to be parsed as a string. EXAMPLE:p3 = rseString(‘
print(dat)OUTPUT:< object at 0x03B5A308>Accessing Elements using GetElementByTagName:EXAMPLE:tagname= tElementsByTagName(‘item’)[0]
print(tagname)If I try to fetch the first element using the GetElementByTagName method, I will see the following output:OUTPUT:
tagname= tElementsByTagName(‘item’)
print(tagname[0]. attributes[‘name’])OUTPUT: breakfastTo retrieve the data present in these tags, you can make use of the data attribute as follows:EXAMPLE:print(tagname[1]. )OUTPUT: Paper DosaYou can also split and retrieve the value of the attributes using the value attribute. EXAMPLE:print(items[1]. attributes[‘name’])OUTPUT: breakfastTo print out all the items available in our menu, you can loop through the items and return all the items. EXAMPLE:for x in items:
print(x. )OUTPUT:Idly Paper Dosa Upma Bisi Bele Bath Kesari BathTo calculate the number of items on our menu, you can make use of the len() function as follows:EXAMPLE:print(len(items))OUTPUT: 5The output specifies that our menu consists of 5 brings us to the end of this Python XML Parser Tutorial. I hope you have understood everything sure you practice as much as possible and revert your experience. Got a question for us? Please mention it in the comments section of this “Python XML Parser Tutorial” blog and we will get back to you as soon as get in-depth knowledge on Python along with its various applications, you can enroll for live Python online training with 24/7 support and lifetime access.
Frequently Asked Questions about xml parsing using python
Can Python parse XML?
Python XML Parsing Modules Python allows parsing these XML documents using two modules namely, the xml. etree. ElementTree module and Minidom (Minimal DOM Implementation). Parsing means to read information from a file and split it into pieces by identifying parts of that particular XML file.Jul 15, 2021
How do you read and parse XML in Python?
To read an XML file using ElementTree, firstly, we import the ElementTree class found inside xml library, under the name ET (common convension). Then passed the filename of the xml file to the ElementTree. parse() method, to enable parsing of our xml file. Then got the root (parent tag) of our xml file using getroot().Sep 2, 2021
How do you parse an XML string in Python?
We use the ElementTree. fromstring() method to parse an XML string. The method returns root Element directly: a subtle difference compared with the ElementTree. parse() method which returns an ElementTree object.Dec 31, 2016
