Python - Parse XML with repeated tags using ElementTree

Question

I have the following XML content:

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Version</key><integer>1</integer>
    <key>Sub Version</key><integer>2</integer>
    <dict>
        <key>1</key>
        <dict>
            <key>ID</key><integer>1</integer>
            <key>Name</key><string>Frank</string>
        </dict>
        <key>2</key>
        <dict>
            <key>ID</key><integer>2</integer>
            <key>Name</key><string>Richard</string>
        </dict>
        <key>3</key>
        <dict>
            <key>ID</key><integer>3</integer>
            <key>Name</key><string>Sophia</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>Persons</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Name</key><string>Persons</string>
            <key>Description</key><string>empty</string>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

I'm having a hard time retrieving the names since this XML tags names are all the same and have no attributes. So far I've tried to access it using iteration over the "second depth dict" but I can't retrieve just what I want.

What I got:

from xml.etree import ElementTree as et

tree = et.parse("file.xml")
root = tree.getroot()

for i in root.find('dict').find('dict').iter('dict'):
    print ([j.text for j in i])

The output I want:

Frank
Richard
Sophia

Does anyone know how to access these values with such tags?

Please edit your question to include the Python code you have so far, as well as the expected output. Thanks. stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example — Mathias Müller
– Mathias Müller, Commented Apr 3, 2020 at 19:23

Jack Fleeting · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-03 20:05:25Z

1

Try it using lxml instead:

from lxml import etree
plist = """your xml above"""

doc = etree.fromstring(plist)
doc.xpath('//dict/dict/key["name"]/following-sibling::string/text()')

output:

['Frank', 'Richard', 'Sophia']

answered Apr 3, 2020 at 20:05

Jack Fleeting

25k6 gold badges27 silver badges49 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Reedy Over a year ago

Thanks for the help! For information I noticed that it also work (better?) with key[text()="Name"] instead of key["name"], the latter one does not seem to really take into account the "name" value after making some tests

Jack Fleeting Over a year ago

@Reedy Yup, the magic of xpath: key[text()="Name"], key["name"]and key[.="name"] are equivalent and all work...

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Python - Parse XML with repeated tags using ElementTree

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related