python xml .findall() returns empty list

Question

I try my best to parse an xml string, but it returns an empty list when searching for child elements. I can provide a working python fiddle:

https://onlinegdb.com/SytNQIOcS

but it comes down to this:

root = ET.fromstring(xml_string)
print(root.findall('Race'))

Any tips? Looks like a beginner mistake..

Element.findall() finds only elements with a tag which are direct children of the current element. — arunp9294
– arunp9294, Commented Oct 31, 2019 at 12:34

arunp9294 · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-31 13:05:08Z

1

root = ET.fromstring(xml_string)
namespace = {'ns': 'http://ergast.com/mrd/1.4' }

for race in root.find('ns:RaceTable', namespace):
    round_num = race.get("round")
    circuit = race.find('ns:RaceName', namespace).text
    date = race.find("ns:Date", namespace).text
    time = race.find("ns:Time", namespace).text
    print(round_num, circuit, date, time)

Errors:

Element.findall() finds only elements with a tag which are direct children of the current element.

If the XML input has namespaces, tags and attributes with prefixes in the form prefix:sometag get expanded to {uri}sometag where the prefix is replaced by the full URI. Also, if there is a default namespace, that full URI gets prepended to all of the non-prefixed tags. Checkout this documentation https://docs.python.org/2/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#parsing-xml-with-namespaces

You can use something like this

edited Oct 31, 2019 at 13:05

answered Oct 31, 2019 at 12:47

arunp9294

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