How do I parse XML in Python

Question

I have many rows in a database that contains XML and I'm trying to write a Python script to count instances of a particular node attribute.

My tree looks like:

<foo>
   <bar>
      <type foobar="1"/>
      <type foobar="2"/>
   </bar>
</foo>

How can I access the attributes "1" and "2" in the XML using Python?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

You can use BeautifulSoup:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

x="""<foo>
   <bar>
      <type foobar="1"/>
      <type foobar="2"/>
   </bar>
</foo>"""

y=BeautifulSoup(x)
>>> y.foo.bar.type["foobar"]
u'1'

>>> y.foo.bar.findAll("type")
[<type foobar="1"></type>, <type foobar="2"></type>]

>>> y.foo.bar.findAll("type")[0]["foobar"]
u'1'
>>> y.foo.bar.findAll("type")[1]["foobar"]
u'2'

Hope it helps!!