Parsing nested XML with ElementTree

Question

I have the following XML format, and I want to pull out the values for name, region, and status using python's xml.etree.ElementTree module.

However, my attempt to get this information has been unsuccessful so far.

<feed>
    <entry>
        <id>uuid:asdfadsfasdf123123</id>
        <title type="text"></title>
        <content type="application/xml">
            <NamespaceDescription xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                <Name>instancename</Name>
                <Region>US</Region>
                <Status>Active</Status>
            </NamespaceDescription>
        </content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>uuid:asdfadsfasdf234234</id>
        <title type="text"></title>
        <content type="application/xml">
            <NamespaceDescription xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                <Name>instancename2</Name>
                <Region>US2</Region>
                <Status>Active</Status>
            </NamespaceDescription>
        </content>
    </entry>
</feed>

My code attempt:

NAMESPACE = '{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}'
root = et.fromstring(XML_STRING)
entry_root = root.findall('{0}entry'.format(NAMESPACE))
for child in entry_root:
    content_node = child.find('{0}content'.format(NAMESPACE))
    for content in content_node:
        for desc in content.iter():
            print desc.tag
            name = desc.find('{0}Name'.format(NAMESPACE))
            print name

desc.tag is giving me the nodes I want to access, but name is returning None. Any ideas what's wrong with my code?

Output of desc.tag:

{http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect}Name
{http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect}Region
{http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect}Status

eltaco431 · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-14 21:43:45Z

2

I don't know why I didn't see this before. But, I was able to get the values.

root = et.fromstring(XML_STRING)
entry_root = root.findall('{0}entry'.format(NAMESPACE))
for child in entry_root:
    content_node = child.find('{0}content'.format(NAMESPACE))
    for descr in content_node:
        name_node = descr.find('{0}Name'.format(NAMESPACE))
        print name_node.text

answered Jan 14, 2016 at 21:43

eltaco431

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1 Comment

FaCoffee Over a year ago

How do you do this if the xml files are already on your pc, instead of having to download them?

gtlambert · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-14 21:30:39Z

1

You can use lxml.etree along with default namespace mapping to parse the XML as follows:

content = '''
<feed>
    <entry>
        <id>uuid:asdfadsfasdf123123</id>
        <title type="text"></title>
        <content type="application/xml">
            <NamespaceDescription xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                <Name>instancename</Name>
                <Region>US</Region>
                <Status>Active</Status>
            </NamespaceDescription>
        </content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>uuid:asdfadsfasdf234234</id>
        <title type="text"></title>
        <content type="application/xml">
            <NamespaceDescription xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                <Name>instancename2</Name>
                <Region>US2</Region>
                <Status>Active</Status>
            </NamespaceDescription>
        </content>
    </entry>
</feed>'''

from lxml import etree

tree = etree.XML(content)
ns = {'default': 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/netservices/2010/10/servicebus/connect'}

names = tree.xpath('//default:Name/text()', namespaces=ns)
regions = tree.xpath('//default:Region/text()', namespaces=ns)
statuses = tree.xpath('//default:Status/text()', namespaces=ns)

print(names)
print(regions)
print(statuses)

Output

['instancename', 'instancename2']
['US', 'US2']
['Active', 'Active']

This XPath/namespace functionality can be adapted to output the data in any format you require.

answered Jan 14, 2016 at 21:30

gtlambert

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2 Comments

eltaco431 Over a year ago

Thanks for the response. I should've mentioned I'm limited to 'xml.etree.ElementTree'

gtlambert Over a year ago

OK - I will see what I can do. In the meantime, see if you can install lxml - it is IMO the best XML parsing module for Python. Run pip install lxml from your command line to install.

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