Get Element Tree with Python lxml

Question

I have the following xml record within a larger xml file:

<Employee>
<id>999</id>
<fname>Tim</fname>
<lname>Boskin</lname>
</Employee>

I am attempting to get the fname and lname attributes via lxml and xpath in python. The following statement is not returning anything:

fname = root.xpath('.//Employee[@id="999"]/fname')

Every example I have found and attempted has yielded no results, what would be the proper syntax?

Cylian · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-29 07:39:39Z

1

@id selects value of the attribute named id.

And this is why it goes wrong. Try this:

fname = root.xpath('//Employee[id/text()="999"]/fname')

Because there is no attribute named id within the Employee element, instead it is a child element of the Employee element. For more details on XPath axes read this.

answered Apr 29, 2013 at 7:39

Cylian

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1 Comment

tsspires Over a year ago

Ah, appreciate it. I was misunderstanding the xpath syntax.

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