How to find XML element by tag in Python

Question

I am having trouble identifying the correct element in Python. What I actually want to see is the latest accessed file in the recently-used.xbel. Therefore I want to iterate over every file to find the one with the latest modified or latest visited This is how the XML file looks like.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xbel version="1.0"
      xmlns:bookmark="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-bookmarks"
      xmlns:mime="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"
>
  <bookmark href="file:///tmp/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb" added="2021-09-14T12:09:05Z" modified="2021-09-14T12:09:05Z" visited="2021-09-15T09:12:13Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/vnd.debian.binary-package"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="Firefox" exec="&apos;firefox %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-14T12:09:05Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/Git/testprog" added="2021-09-15T09:12:13Z" modified="2021-09-15T09:12:13Z" visited="2021-09-15T09:12:13Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="inode/directory"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="code" exec="&apos;code %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T09:12:13Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/.local/share/recently-used.xbel" added="2021-09-15T09:51:57Z" modified="2021-09-15T09:51:57Z" visited="2021-09-15T09:51:57Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/x-xbel"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="code" exec="&apos;code %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T09:51:57Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///tmp/slack-desktop-4.19.2-amd64.deb" added="2021-09-15T11:45:49Z" modified="2021-09-15T11:45:49Z" visited="2021-09-16T13:26:26Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/vnd.debian.binary-package"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="Firefox" exec="&apos;firefox %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T11:45:49Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb" added="2021-09-15T11:52:39Z" modified="2021-09-15T11:52:39Z" visited="2021-09-16T13:26:26Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/vnd.debian.binary-package"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="Firefox" exec="&apos;firefox %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T11:52:39Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/Documents/libretest" added="2021-09-15T11:58:53Z" modified="2021-09-15T11:58:53Z" visited="2021-09-16T13:26:26Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/octet-stream"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="LibreOffice 6.4" exec="&apos;soffice %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T11:58:53Z" count="1"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/Documents/libretest.odt" added="2021-09-15T11:58:53Z" modified="2021-09-15T15:42:04Z" visited="2021-09-16T13:26:26Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="LibreOffice 6.4" exec="&apos;soffice %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-15T15:42:04Z" count="12"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
  <bookmark href="file:///home/test/Git/node-socket" added="2021-09-16T13:26:25Z" modified="2021-09-16T13:26:49Z" visited="2021-09-16T13:26:26Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="inode/directory"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application name="code" exec="&apos;code %u&apos;" modified="2021-09-16T13:26:49Z" count="2"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>
</xbel>

In my code I am trying to access bookmark:applications but with no success.

    home = str(Path.home())
    root = ET.parse(home + '/.local/share/recently-used.xbel').getroot()
    print(root)
    print('lower')
    for bookmark in root.iter('bookmark'):
        print(bookmark)
        for applications in bookmark.find('applications'):
            print(applications)

What would be the correct way to access bookmark:applications and find the last visited?

The bookmark:applications element is bound to the http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-bookmarks namespace (by way of xmlns:bookmark="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-bookmarks"). See docs.python.org/3/library/… — mzjn
– mzjn, Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 13:35
If you need only last modified bookmark information then you can do that using modified attribute of bookmark tag, as modified attribute of bookmark and modified attribute of bookmark:application both are having same value. — ForamJ
– ForamJ, Commented Sep 30, 2021 at 4:31

Forensic_07 · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-08 19:08:30Z

2

from lxml import etree

NS = {"n": "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-bookmarks"}

root = etree.parse("book.xml")
bookmarks = root.xpath("//bookmark")
most_recent_bookmark = max(
    bookmarks,
    key=lambda bmark: bmark.xpath(
        "string(.//n:application/@modified)",
        namespaces=NS,
    ),
)

print("Most recent href: " + most_recent_bookmark.xpath("string(@href)"))
print(
    "Most recent modified: "
    + most_recent_bookmark.xpath("string(.//n:application/@modified)", namespaces=NS)
)

Output:

Most recent href: file:///home/test/Git/node-socket
Most recent modified: 2021-09-16T13:26:49Z

The problem you're running into is in specifying the namespace represented by bookmark: in the original xml and by n: in the code sample. The xpath(), find() and findall() functions all let you provide a dictionary of namespaces.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#xml.etree.ElementTree.Element.findall

If, as you say, the namespace may change, you can use the XPath .//*[local-name() = 'application']/@modified in place of .//n:application/@modified with no namespace parameter. (However, I would be surprised to see the producer arbitrarily changing the namespace, because it's just asking for everything that consumes your data to break. The url is as much a part of the node name as "application" is.)

edited Oct 8, 2021 at 19:08

answered Sep 29, 2021 at 20:29

Forensic_07

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4 Comments

Silve2611 Over a year ago

My Problem is that i will not always know the namespace. If it changes my implementation will not work. Is there no way to get it from the file. I would not want to hardcode it.

Forensic_07 Over a year ago

I believe .//*:application/@modified should appropriately match any namespace. Will test when I have a moment.

Forensic_07 Over a year ago

That said, I would be very surprised to see the namespace arbitrarily change.

Forensic_07 Over a year ago

Have rewritten function to be clearer, and have provided a way around a variable namespace.

halfer · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-19 21:44:36Z

1

This will be useful to access bookmark:applications and dataframe will help you get the latest visited/modified bookmark with application-name.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import pandas as pd

root = ET.parse('/content/sample.xml').getroot()
lst = []

for bookmark in bookmarklist:
  bookmark_lst = []
  print(bookmark.attrib)
  bookmark_lst.append(bookmark.attrib['href'])
  bookmark_lst.append(bookmark.attrib['modified'])
  bookmark_lst.append(bookmark.attrib['visited'])
  for ele in list(bookmark.iter()) :
    if 'application' in ele.tag:
      if 'name' in ele.attrib:
        bookmark_lst.append(ele.attrib['name'])
  lst.append(bookmark_lst)

df = pd.DataFrame(lst,columns ['href','modified','visited','application_name'])

df['modified'] = pd.to_datetime(df['modified'])
df['visited'] = pd.to_datetime(df['visited'])

least_recent_date = df['visited'].min()
most_recent_date = df['visited'].max()

edited Oct 19, 2021 at 21:44

halfer

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answered Sep 29, 2021 at 14:41

ForamJ

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3 Comments

mzjn Over a year ago

What was the problem in the question? Don't just post code with no explanation. There is nothing about pandas in the question.

Silve2611 Over a year ago

I would actually want the element and all his attributes. Not only the date. This would only show me the oldest and the newest date. I would like to fetch the element with the highest date and check the other attributes.

Silve2611 Over a year ago

I works quite well up to the part with pandas. columns is not defined.

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