How to fetch all the child nodes of an XML using python?

The solution using xml.etree.ElementTree module:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("yourxml.xml")
root = tree.getroot()
tag_names = {t.tag for t in root.findall('.//country/*')}

print(tag_names)  # print a set of unique tag names

The output:

{'gdp', 'rank', 'neighbor', 'year'}

• './/country/*' - xpath expression to extract all child elements of node country

Have a look up to python documentation. It verily uses this xml tree as example.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('country_data.xml')
root = tree.getroot()

country = root[0].getchildren()
map(lambda e: e.tag, r)
# ['rank', 'year', 'gdp', 'neighbor', 'neighbor']

Btw, when you are stuck, open repl and go step by step. I do not remember all those stuff above. And last used xml parser 2 or 3 years ago. But I know, "try and see" is the best teacher.

Those are steps, how I come up with a solution.

# imports and other stuff.
>>> tree = ET.parse('data.xml')
>>> root = tree.getroot()
>>> country = root[0]
>>> dir(country)
['__class__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__len__', '__module__', '__new__', '__nonzero__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', '_children', 'append', 'attrib', 'clear', 'copy', 'extend', 'find', 'findall', 'findtext', 'get', 'getchildren', 'getiterator', 'insert', 'items', 'iter', 'iterfind', 'itertext', 'keys', 'makeelement', 'remove', 'set', 'tag', 'tail', 'text']
>>> country.keys()
['name']
>>> country.getchildren()
[<Element 'rank' at 0x7f873cf53910>, <Element 'year' at 0x7f873cf539d0>, <Element 'gdp' at 0x7f873cf53a90>, <Element 'neighbor' at 0x7f873cf53c10>, <Element 'neighbor' at 0x7f873cf53c50>]
>>> country.getchildren()[0]
<Element 'rank' at 0x7f873cf53910>
>>> r = country.getchildren()[0]
>>> dir(r)
['__class__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__len__', '__module__', '__new__', '__nonzero__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', '_children', 'append', 'attrib', 'clear', 'copy', 'extend', 'find', 'findall', 'findtext', 'get', 'getchildren', 'getiterator', 'insert', 'items', 'iter', 'iterfind', 'itertext', 'keys', 'makeelement', 'remove', 'set', 'tag', 'tail', 'text']
>>> r.tag
'rank'
>>> r = country.getchildren()[0]
>>> r
<Element 'rank' at 0x7f873cf53910>
>>> r = country.getchildren()
>>> r
[<Element 'rank' at 0x7f873cf53910>, <Element 'year' at 0x7f873cf539d0>, <Element 'gdp' at 0x7f873cf53a90>, <Element 'neighbor' at 0x7f873cf53c10>, <Element 'neighbor' at 0x7f873cf53c50>]
>>> map(lambda e: e.tag, r)
['rank', 'year', 'gdp', 'neighbor', 'neighbor']

this code tested under python 3.6

 import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

 name = '4.xml'
 tree = ET.parse(name)
 root = tree.getroot()
 ditresult =[]

 for child in root:
     for child1 in child:         
          ditresult.append(child1.tag)

  print (ditresult)

=============

['rank', 'year', 'gdp', 'neighbor', 'neighbor']

In Python3 you can do, with xml.etree.ElementTree

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.parse('file.xml').getroot()

for country in root.findall('.//country/*'):
    print(country.tag)
    
# Alternative1 loop the country list of nodes

for country in root.findall('.//country'):
    for node in country:
        print(node.tag)

# Alternative 2 loop first child of root
for node in root[0]:
    print(node.tag)

# For all nodes use iter(), include the found node

for node in root.iter():
    print(node.tag)