Parsing XML in Python: Multiple same attributes

Question

I have an xml file:

    <movie title="Enemy Behind">
       <type>War, Thriller</type>
       <type>WW2</type>
       <format>DVD</format>
       <year>2003</year>
       <rating>PG</rating>
       <stars>10</stars>
       <description>Talk about a US-Japan war</description>
   </movie>

And I am using the following code to Parse this XML in Python:

     Print detail of each movie.
     for movie in movies:
        print ("*****Movie*****")
        if movie.hasAttribute("title"):
           print ("Title: %s" % movie.getAttribute("title"))

        type = movie.getElementsByTagName('type')[0]
        print ("Type: %s" % type.childNodes[0].data)
        format = movie.getElementsByTagName('format')[0]
        print ("Format: %s" % format.childNodes[0].data)
        rating = movie.getElementsByTagName('rating')[0]
        print ("Rating: %s" % rating.childNodes[0].data)
        description = movie.getElementsByTagName('description')[0]
        print ("Description: %s" % description.childNodes[0].data)

But using this code only one of the attribute gets printed i.e. "War, Thriller". The other attribute that says "WW2" doesn't get printed.

Should I use a for loop? I have tried that and I get an error "'Element' object is not iterable".

What does this show? print type(movie.getElementsByTagName('type')) — Bemmu
– Bemmu, Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 2:29

Jeanderson Candido · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-07 12:24:57Z

3

I don't know what library you are using but you can get the values for the XML snippet with the code below:

test.xml

   <movie title="Enemy Behind">
       <type>War, Thriller</type>
       <type>WW2</type>
       <format>DVD</format>
       <year>2003</year>
       <rating>PG</rating>
       <stars>10</stars>
       <description>Talk about a US-Japan war</description>
   </movie>

test.py

import lxml.etree

# Getting the XML root tag... Movie in our case
root = lxml.etree.parse("test.xml").getroot()

# the method "get" returns the value of the XML attribute informed
# as parameter
print(root.get("title"))

# You can iterate over the children of an XML node
for child in root:
    print(child.text) # gets the text value from the children XML nodes

# Or more specifically, for each type, use the method FIND to get
# the XML child node from the current XML node.
node = root.find("name")
if node is not None:
    print(node.text)

# ..Or if you expect more than one node, as it is the case for the tag
# "type", you can use FINDALL which returns all direct children from the current XML node.
nodes = root.findall("type")
for node in nodes:
    print(node.text)

4 Comments

Nikhilesh Sharma Over a year ago

Mate I am looking at the tutorial you sent me, they seem to be very nice. I am trying to devise my own way of doing it. Will post soon what I used.

Jeanderson Candido Over a year ago

@NikhileshSharma the code snippet that I posted should help you but reading the references is highly recommended :) if you think I helped you in any way, consider upvoting/accepting my answer :)

Nikhilesh Sharma Over a year ago

Mate I was trying something different> i will probably make a new post for it.

Jeanderson Candido Over a year ago

@NikhileshSharma didn't findall help you? I demonstrate the usage in the last statement. If you meant really something different, I suggest you to edit you question and I can update my answer :)

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