xpath expression with attribute in Element tree python

Question

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree: ET = ET.parse(file)
tree.find('.//ns1:tag/@someattribute', ns)

is resulting in {KeyError}'@', xpath expression is correct as per my knowledge, is there any way in element tree to get attribute value directly using xpath and not using .attrib

Hm, I see, interesting, I never knew about that string() functionality. Thanks for explaining! :) — Landcross
– Landcross, Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 10:17

mzjn · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-24 11:15:32Z

5

The XPath expression is syntactically OK. The problem is that find() locates only elements. It cannot be used to find attributes.

This should work:

attr = tree.find('.//ns1:tag', ns).get('someattribute')

With lxml, you could use the xpath() method (which returns a list):

attr = tree.xpath('.//ns1:tag/@someattribute', namespaces=ns)[0]

answered Sep 24, 2019 at 11:15

mzjn

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2 Comments

Vinay G Over a year ago

Is there anyway in ET that can fetch even attributes using xpath

mzjn Over a year ago

No there isn't, unfortunately. @ is understood in predicates only (docs.python.org/3/library/…).

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