parsing xml content in python

Question

I want to write information from xml to dict in Python. Below is xml file:

<data>
  <files>
    <links>
      <item>
        <file_name>file1</file_name>
        <id>100</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file2</file_name>
        <id>200</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file3</file_name>
        <id>300</id>
      </item>
    </links>
  </files>
</data>

To Python dict like a:

xml_content = { 'file1' = 100, 'file2' = 200, 'file3' = 300 }

Thanks for your help

Simon Kirsten · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-13 18:56:52Z

1

Using xmltodict this simple code can be used to extract your dictionary:

install xmltodict with pip install xmltodict

import xmltodict

doc = xmltodict.parse("""
<data>
  <files>
    <links>
      <item>
        <file_name>file1</file_name>
        <id>100</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file2</file_name>
        <id>200</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file3</file_name>
        <id>300</id>
      </item>
    </links>
  </files>
</data>
""")

d = {}

for item in doc["data"]["files"]["links"]["item"]:
    d[item["file_name"]] = int(item["id"])

print(d)

d will be:

{u'file3': 300, u'file2': 200, u'file1': 100}

Alternatively you can load the xml from a file like this:

with open('path/to/file.xml') as fd:
    doc = xmltodict.parse(fd.read())

edited Jun 13, 2016 at 18:56

answered Jun 13, 2016 at 18:51

Simon Kirsten

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4 Comments

dracons2 Over a year ago

I recieve that message: >>> for item in doc["data"]["files"]["links"]["item"]: ... d[item["file_name"]] = int(item["id"]) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module> KeyError: 'file_name'

Simon Kirsten Over a year ago

@dracons2 This happens because in your xml file the <file_name> either does not exist or has another name. But my answer is correct for your question and if your file is built as you specified the example will work.

dracons2 Over a year ago

TRUE, The example works properly. Thank for your help.

Simon Kirsten Over a year ago

You're welcome. Please consider accepting the answer.

ashishmohite · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-15 03:44:08Z

0

Beautiful Soup should help you

Link - https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/

Something like this should work

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup("""
<data>
  <files>
    <links>
      <item>
        <file_name>file1</file_name>
        <id>100</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file2</file_name>
        <id>200</id>
      </item>
      <item>
        <file_name>file3</file_name>
        <id>300</id>
      </item>
    </links>
  </files>
</data>
""")


xml_content = { item.find('file_name').string: item.find('id').string for item in soup.find_all('item') }

Output:

{'file2': '200', 'file3': '300', 'file1': '100'}

answered Jun 15, 2016 at 3:44

ashishmohite

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