Get parent node using child node lxml python

Question

For this xml,

 xmldata="""
    <locations>

    <continent region="Africa" >
        <country id="84" countryname="Algeria" ></country>
    </continent>

    <continent region="Asia" >
        <country id="84" countryname="India" ></country>
    </continent>

    <continent region="America" >
        <country id="84" countryname="Mexico" ></country>
    </continent>

</locations>
"""

I am trying to get region name using country name , If country name is India then code should return Asia.

What I have tried ,

import lxml.etree as ET
root = ET.fromstring(xmldata)
flag=False
continent=""
country=""
for neighbor in root.iter('continent'):
    for i in neighbor.iter("country"):
        if i.attrib.get('countryname')=="India":
            flag=True
            continent=neighbor.attrib.get('region')
            country=i.attrib.get('countryname')
    if flag==True:
        break
print 'Continent is ',continent , 'And country is ', country

This code works , but it is not convenient way to do this.

How can i achieve this using xpath expression ?

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-28 12:26:50Z

1

Use //continent[./country/@countryname="India"]/@region xpath expression:

>>> import lxml.etree as ET
>>> xmldata="""
... <locations>
... 
... <continent region="Africa" >
...     <country id="84" countryname="Algeria" ></country>
... </continent>
... 
... <continent region="Asia" >
...     <country id="84" countryname="India" ></country>
... </continent>
... 
... <continent region="America" >
...     <country id="84" countryname="Mexico" ></country>
... </continent>
... 
... </locations>
... """
>>> root = ET.fromstring(xmldata)
>>> print root.xpath('//continent[./country/@countryname="India"]/@region')
['Asia']

answered Apr 28, 2014 at 12:26

alecxe

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2 Comments

Nishant Nawarkhede Over a year ago

Thanks , can you please give me some links for learning xpath experssions ?

alecxe Over a year ago

@Fledgling don't like to refer to w3c schools but there is a lot of info there. Also, you can experiment with the xpaths online, see xpathtester.

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