Parsing a specific element from XML using Python/ET

Question

I have XML along the following lines:

<?xml version="xxx"?>
<doc:document xmlns:doc="some value 1...">
    <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="some value 2...">
        <rdf:Description rdf:about="some value...">
            <dct:format xmlns:dct="http://someurl/">some value 3</dct:format>
            <dct:title xmlns:dct="http://someurl/">some text of interest to me</dct:title>
        </rdf:Description>
    </rdf:RDF>
</doc:document>

How do I get the "some text of interest to me" using Python/ETree?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-13 15:52:13Z

1

You'll need to look for the title element by specifying the namespace:

tree.find('.//dct:title', namespaces={'dct': 'http://purl.org/dc/terms/'})

You have to pass in a namespaces mapping on each search, so you could also just specify that up front and reuse:

nsmap = {
    'dct': 'http://purl.org/dc/terms/',
    'doc': 'http://www.witbd.org/xmlns/common/document/',
    'rdf': 'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#',
}

tree.find('.//dct:title', namespaces=nsmap)

For your example document (with the namespaces restored), that gives:

>>> tree.find('.//dct:title', namespaces=nsmap)
<Element '{http://purl.org/dc/terms/}title' at 0x105ec4690>
>>> tree.find('.//dct:title', namespaces=nsmap).text
'some text of interest to me'

You could also use the namespace in an XPath expression:

tree.find('.//{http://purl.org/dc/terms/}title')

which is what using a prefix and the namespaces map does internally anyway.

edited Mar 13, 2013 at 15:52

answered Mar 13, 2013 at 15:47

Martijn Pieters

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1 Comment

user7289 Over a year ago

BTW this method doesnt work when cElementTree is imported; only with ElementTree

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