String operations on xml nodes in Python

Question

I am reading an xml file and want to perform string operations on the node's content.

import os
import elementtree.ElementTree as ET
from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree
from xml.etree.ElementTree import tostring

xml_file = os.path.abspath(__file__)
xml_file = os.path.dirname(xml_file)
xml_file = os.path.join(xml_file, "Small1Review.xml")
print xml_file

root = ET.parse(xml_file).getroot()
text = tostring(root)
#print text

for a in text:
    #print a, "-->", a.text
    text = tostring(a)
    print text

But the code gives the following error,

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "myEtXML.py", line 33, in <module>
    text = tostring(a)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 1009, in tostring
    ElementTree(element).write(file, encoding)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 543, in __init__
    assert element is None or iselement(element)
AssertionError

How can I parse each node and perform some string operations on each of them.?

Kris Harper · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-14 16:41:42Z

2

You've written for a in text, but text is a string and you're treating it like an XML node.

The tostring method takes an etree.Element, but in this case a is a character of your string text.

If you want to iterate over the tree, just treat it as a list

root = ET.parse(xml_file).getroot()
for child in root:
    print tostring(child)

Also, your comment #print a, "-->", a.text seems to indicate that you want the text attribute of your nodes. This is not what's returned by the tostring method. The tostring method takes a node and makes an XML style string out of it. If you want the text attribute, just use a.text.

edited Nov 14, 2011 at 16:41

answered Nov 14, 2011 at 16:36

Kris Harper

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