XML parser python fails to get element

Question

etree.ElementTree package in python to parse my xml file but it seems it fails to do so.

My xml file hierarchy is like this: root <- -> config data <> sourcefile <- -> file object1 object2 ... etc.

when I use print self.xml_root.findall(".\config"), I only got "[]", which is an empty list, thanks

can you please give a sample of your xml file and the code you used? — dnozay
– dnozay, Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 20:21

torek · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-14 21:59:19Z

2

If you really have '.\config' in the string, that would be the problem. That's a string literal using \c as one of its characters. Even if you have '.\\config' or r'.\config', both of which specify a literal backslash, that would still be wrong:

$ cat eleme.py
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.fromstring("""
<root>
  <config>
    source
  </config>
  <config>
    source
  </config>
</root>""")

print r'using .\config', root.findall('.\config')
print r'using .\\config', root.findall('.\\config')
print 'using ./config', root.findall('./config')
$ python2.7 eleme.py 
using .\config []
using .\\config []
using ./config [<Element 'config' at 0x8017a8610>, <Element 'config' at 0x8017a8650>]

answered Jul 14, 2013 at 21:59

torek

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2 Comments

Coderzelf Over a year ago

so I need './config'?, but the actual situation is that I cannot use root.iter('object'), which is a grand-child node of root. What's the problem with that? Thank you

torek Over a year ago

I'll need to see more actual code and XML to know what you mean here. In general elem.iter(), for any element, gives you an iterator over the item and its children: basically, yield self followed by `yield next_child_in_sequence', optionally restricting by tag-match.

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