how to search for partial sub-string or regex in XPATH in a xml file using python

Question

Am trying to search for a regex pattern in xml file content and finding issues on how to pass sub-string which always ends with digit (this is part which is dynamic in the xml file so, don't know how create a pattern and search).

Once pattern is found, then I need to get it's child tag items ie, attrib and text value.

xml file content :

         <author NAME="PYTHON_DD101">
             <type>BOOK</type>
             <ID>59</ID>
             <inst ID="A">Garry</inst>
             <inst ID="B">Gerald</inst>
         </author>
         <author NAME="PYTHON_ABC4">
             <type>BOOK</type>
             <SrcID>62</SrcID>
             <inst ID="A">Niel</inst>
             <inst ID="B">Long</inst>
         </author>

code :

text = "PYTHON"
tmp = '"' + text + "_ABC" + '"'
print(tmp)
#pattern = re.compile('%s\d+'%tmp)
endsWithNumber = re.compile('%s\d$'%tmp)
print(endsWithNumber)
#FoundDetails = Content.find("PYTHON_ABC4")
FoundDetails = Content.find(".//author[@NAME='{}']".format(endsWithNumber))
#regex = re.compile('%s\d+'%tmp)
#matches = regex.match(Content)
#print(matches)
print(type(Content))      
print(type(FoundDetails))
print(FoundDetails)
for FoundDetails in FoundDetails.iterfind('author'):
    author = FoundDetails.attrib['NAME']
    print 'author:', author
for inst in FoundDetails.iterfind('inst'):
    print 'inst id:', inst.attrib['ID'], 'inst name:', inst.text

error am getting :

PYTHON_ABC
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x000000000403F168>
<class 'xml.etree.ElementTree.Element'>
<type 'NoneType'>
None
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\test_Book.py", line 45, in <module>
    bookauthor = book.get_Book_by_author(Book)
  File "C:\Book.py", line 219, in get_Book_by_author
    for FoundDetails in FoundDetails.iterfind('author'):
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'iterfind'

Expected output :

inst id: A inst name: Niel
inst id: B inst name: Long

if I pass exact NAME value ie, "PYTHON_ABC4" in the below line, it works but I don't want to pass hard-code value since there maybe other instance in the file there are chance of having name with same pattern ex :"PYTHON_ABC12" that case I wanted to get those book details as well.

FoundDetails = Content.find(".//author[@NAME='{}']".format("PYTHON_ABC4"))

pankaj mishra · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-01 09:07:14Z

1

i modified your code little bit , to get the desired output, hope it helps

data='''
<PARAMETER-VALUES>
<author NAME="PYTHON_DD11">
             <type>BOOK</type>
             <ID>59</ID>
             <inst ID="A">Garry</inst>
             <inst ID="B">Gerald</inst>
         </author>
         <author NAME="PYTHON_ABC4">
             <type>BOOK</type>
             <SrcID>62</SrcID>
             <inst ID="A">Niel</inst>
             <inst ID="B">Long</inst>
         </author>
</PARAMETER-VALUES>
'''




#Element tree to parse the xml data

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import re
root=ET.fromstring(data)

# A function to verify if the node is alphanumeric

def hasnumbers(result):
    return bool(re.search(r'\d', result))

for author in root.iter('author'):
    result=author.attrib.get('NAME')
    b=hasnumbers(result)
    if b==True:
        for inst in author.iterfind('inst'):
            print 'inst id:',inst.attrib.get('ID'),'inst name:',inst.text

output

inst id: A inst name: Garry
inst id: B inst name: Gerald
inst id: A inst name: Niel
inst id: B inst name: Long

answered Dec 1, 2017 at 9:07

pankaj mishra

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1 Comment

HULK Over a year ago

perfect. thanks Pankaj. good approach to call "hasnumbers" sub-function. learned new idea today. Many thanks again.

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