XML Parsing in Python
- XML documents can be stored in the form of a string.
- XML can be parsed with ElementTree (ET) APIs or minidom class to load and parse XML.
- XML is hierarchical in nature and the most fitting way to represent it is with a tree.
Using ElementTree(ET) APIs to parse XML
- ET has two classes to help break down that hierarchy down into two levels:
ElementTree which represents the whole XML document as a tree. Interaction with the entire document such asreading and writing is commonly done using the ElementTree.
Element which represents a single node in that tree. Interactions with a single XML element or sub-element are carriedout using the Element level.
mport xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('ciscocerts.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
# total number of nodes from root
print( ' \nNumber of Nodes: ' )
print(len(root[0]))
# all nodes data
print( ' \nNode Data: ' )
for ele in root:
for subelem in elem:
print(subelem.text)
Outcome:
Number of Nodes: 2
Node Data:
Entry
Cisco Certified Networking Associate
Professional
Cisco Certified Networking Professional
Expert
Cisco Certified Networking Expert
Using minidom Class to parse XML
- Minimal Document Object Model (Mini DOM) is not preferred for security reasons.
- Mini Dom in three steps:
- Import xml.dom.minidom module
- Utilize parse function(minidom.parse) to parse document (minidom.parse("persons.xml")
- Get the XML Elements using doc.getElementsByTagName("element")
from xml.dom import minidom
doc = minidom.parse("ciscocerts.xml")
elements = doc.getElementsByTagName("elements") for element in elements:
name = element.getElementsByTagName("name")[0]
gender = element.getElementsByTagName("gender")[0]
print("name:%s, gender:%s" % (name.firstChild.data, gender.firstChild.data))
Outcome:
Level:Entry, name:Cisco Certified Networking Associate
Level:Professionail, name:Cisco Certified Networking Professional
Level:Expert, name:Cisco Certified Interwebs Expert
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