XML with Python

General Notes

XML

• Shares structured data.
• Start Tag & End Tag
  • <contact>
  • </contact>
• Text Content
• Attributes (e.g. <email hide="yes" />
  • Key="string"
• Can use self-closing Tags
• Whitespace unimportant
• Indents unimportant
• Tree-like structure
  • Text is child of node.
    • <parent>child</parent>
  • Attribute is also child of node.
    • <parent type="son">child</parent>
• XML Paths:
  • grandparent/parent/child
  • <grandparent>
    • <parent>
      
      • child
    • </parent>
  • </grandparent>

XML Schema

Likely *.XSD format via W3C standard

• Contract is in XML format
• Describes:
  • tags
  • format
  • structure
  • datatypes (e.g. integer)
• Used to validate XML / transfer between machines

Format

• xs:element
  • xs:complexType
    • xs:sequence
      • <xs:element name = "weeks" type="xs:interger"/>

Time

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ

Parse XML in Python

    import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

    data = file.xml

    tree = ET.fromstring(data)
    print('Name:',tree.find('name').text)
    print('Attr:',tree.find('email').get('hide'))

    # Find Multiple
    lst = tree.findall('users/user')
    print('User count:', len(lst))
    for item in lst:
        print('Name', item.find('name').text)
        print('Id', item.find('id').text)
        print('Attribute', item.get("x"))