How to use ElemenTree for reading XML files in Python?

Question

I've got an XML file which looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<Object>
    <ID>Object_01</ID>
    <Location>Manchester</Location>
    <Date>01-01-2020</Date>
    <Time>15u59m05s</Time>   
-<Max_25Hz>
    <25Hz>0.916631065043311</25Hz>
    <25Hz>0.797958008447961</25Hz>
</Max_25Hz>
-<Max_75Hz>
    <75Hz>1.96599232706463</75Hz>
    <75Hz>1.48317837078523</75Hz>
</Max_75Hz>
</Object>

I still don't really understand the difference between attributes and text. With below code I tried to receive all the values using text.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = r'c:\data\FF\Desktop\My_files\XML-files\Object_01.xml'

tree = ET.parse(root)
root = tree.getroot()

for elem in root:
    for subelem in elem:
        print(subelem.text)

Expected output:

Object_01
Manchester
01-01-2020
15u59m05s
0.916631065043311
0.797958008447961
1.96599232706463
1.48317837078523

Received output:

0.916631065043311
0.797958008447961
1.96599232706463
1.48317837078523

I tried to do to same with .attributes in the hope to receive all the 'column' names but then I received:

{}
{}
{}
{}

Rakesh · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-30 06:39:20Z

1

You can access them directly above the for-loop.

Ex:

tree = ET.ElementTree(ET.fromstring(X))
root = tree.getroot()

for elem in root:
    print(elem.text)       #! Access them Here
    for subelem in elem:
        print(subelem.text)

Output:

Object_01
Manchester
01-01-2020
15u59m05s

        
0.916631065043311
0.797958008447961

        
1.96599232706463
1.48317837078523

answered Sep 30, 2020 at 6:39

Rakesh

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3 Comments

NorthAfrican Over a year ago

Thank you, and how about printing all the 'colum' names?

Rakesh Over a year ago

use .tag ex: elem.tag or subelem.tag

NorthAfrican Over a year ago

Great! Thank you. So whats the difference between attrib and tag?

Jean-Marc Volle · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-30 06:42:25Z

0

You could give a try to https://github.com/martinblech/xmltodict. It is almost a replacement for json module. This allows to read an xml file into a python dict. This simplifies greatly accessing the xml content.

Something like:

from xmldict import *

root = r'c:\data\FF\Desktop\My_files\XML-files\Object_01.xml'
with open(root) as file:
   xmlStr = file.read()
   xmldict = xml.parse(xmlStr)

print (xmldict['Object']['Id'])

answered Sep 30, 2020 at 6:42

Jean-Marc Volle

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