XPath Query in XML using Python

Question

Is it possible to use XPath Query in Python while processing XML. I am using minidom which doesn't support that. Is there any other module for that?

gonsalu · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-21 12:10:13Z

12

http://docs.python.org/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html

etree supports XPath queries, just like lxml.

etree is included in the standard library, but lxml is faster.

answered Aug 21, 2009 at 12:10

gonsalu

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user793458 Over a year ago

Support for XPath is limited in ElementTree though, as quoted in the Python 3 docs: "This module provides limited support for XPath expressions for locating elements in a tree. The goal is to support a small subset of the abbreviated syntax; a full XPath engine is outside the scope of the module."

hd1 · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-05 20:10:38Z

4

My favorite XML processing library for Python is lxml which, because it is a wrapper around libxml2, also supports full XPath.

There is also 4Suite which is more of a pure Python solution.

edited Dec 5, 2015 at 20:10

hd1

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answered Aug 21, 2009 at 10:26

Van Gale

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Comments

Gringo Suave · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-28 23:00:48Z

4

ElementTree is included. Under 2.6 and below its xpath is pretty weak, but in 2.7+ much improved:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
root = ET.parse(filename)
result = ''

# How to make decisions based on attributes even in 2.6
for elem in root.findall('.//child/grandchild'):
    if elem.attrib.get('name') == 'foo':
        result = elem.text
        break

edited Nov 28, 2022 at 23:00

answered Nov 22, 2012 at 1:02

Gringo Suave

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1 Comment

alex Over a year ago

my python is still there. thanks a lot, friend

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