Python getting element value for specific element

Question

I am attempting to parse the below XML file but having difficulty getting a specific element value. I am trying to specify element 'Item_No_2' to get the related value <v>2222222222</v> but am unable to do it using get.element('Item_No_2'). Am I using the get.element value incorrectly?

XML File:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Data.xsl"?>
<abc>
  <md>
    <mi>
      <datetime>20160822020003</datetime>
      <period>3600</period>
      <it>Item_No_1</it>
      <it>Item_No_2</it>
      <it>Item_No_3</it>
      <it>Item_No_4</it>
      <it>Item_No_5</it>
      <it>Item_No_6</it>
      <it>Item_No_7</it>
      <ovalue>
        <v>1111111111</v>
        <v>2222222222</v>
        <v>3333333333</v>
        <v>4444444444</v>
        <v>5555555555</v>
        <v>6666666666</v>
        <v>7777777777</v>
      </ovalue>
    </mi>
  </md>
</abc>

My Code:

from xml.etree.ElementTree import parse

doc = parse('test.xml').getroot()

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/'):
    print(element.text)

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/'):
    print(element.text)

The current output gets them separately but I can't seem to understand how to call a specific element value.

Output:

20160822020003
3600
Item_No_1
Item_No_2
Item_No_3
Item_No_4
Item_No_5
Item_No_6
Item_No_7


1111111111
2222222222
3333333333
4444444444
5555555555
6666666666
7777777777

Tried this but did not work:

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/'):
    print(element.get('Item_No_1'))

OneCricketeer · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-23 04:42:01Z

2

There is no Item_No_1 at the elements that are found by doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/').

I think what you may try to do is get both lists

items = [e.text for e in doc.findall('md/mi/it')]
values = [e.text for e in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')]

Then find the index of the string 'Item_No_1' from items, and then index into values with that number.

Alternatively, zip the two lists together and check when you find one element.

for item,value in zip(doc.findall('md/mi/it'), doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')):
    if item.text == 'Item_No_1':
        print(value.text)

There might be a better way, but those are the first ways that come to mind

edited Aug 23, 2016 at 4:42

answered Aug 23, 2016 at 3:43

OneCricketeer

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3 Comments

MBasith Over a year ago

Thanks for the response. The second alternative with ZIP gives me the wrong output. Provides 3333333 instead of 111111, do you know why? I like the 1st option but can you tell me how I would get the index?

FujiApple Over a year ago

use for item, value in zip(doc.findall('md/mi/it'), doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')):

MBasith Over a year ago

@FujiApple Thanks, that did the trick to get the output matching the Item. Now I just need to play around some more and figure out how I can consistently get the right match in a larger xml with multiple elements that dont have a variable number of values. Cheers.

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