How to get XML tag value in Python

Question

I have some XML in a unicode-string variable in Python as follows:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<results preview='0'>
<meta>
<fieldOrder>
<field>count</field>
</fieldOrder>
</meta>
    <result offset='0'>
        <field k='count'>
            <value><text>6</text></value>
        </field>
    </result>
</results>

How do I extract the 6 in <value><text>6</text></value> using Python?

See also http://stackoverflow.com/q/1912434/425313. – Brad Koch May 02 '13 at 22:24 — Brad Koch, May 02 '13 at 22:24
How to get the value preview='0' from results tag? – Interested_Programmer Jan 02 '19 at 20:02 — Interested_Programmer, Jan 02 '19 at 20:02

Colin Dunklau · Answer 1 · 2016-12-06T10:38:40.803

22

With lxml:

import lxml.etree
# xmlstr is your xml in a string
root = lxml.etree.fromstring(xmlstr)
textelem = root.find('result/field/value/text')
print textelem.text

Edit: But I imagine there could be more than one result...

import lxml.etree
# xmlstr is your xml in a string
root = lxml.etree.fromstring(xmlstr)
results = root.findall('result')
textnumbers = [r.find('field/value/text').text for r in results]

edited Dec 06 '16 at 10:38

answered Jul 05 '12 at 19:31

Colin Dunklau

3,001
1
20
19

4

+1 [lxml is much faster than BeautifulSoup](http://blog.dispatched.ch/2010/08/16/beautifulsoup-vs-lxml-performance/). – Bengt Dec 11 '12 at 21:14
@bngtlrs, BS 4 will prefer lxml over most other parsers. So that point is moot, but I like the lxml API far better. – Colin Dunklau Jan 02 '13 at 18:02
yeap, i've been switching to lxml for quite a while :D – Thiem Nguyen May 08 '15 at 09:25

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '12 at 19:34

8

BeautifulSoup is the most simple way to parse XML as far as I know...

And assume that you have read the introduction, then just simply use:

soup = BeautifulSoup('your_XML_string')
print soup.find('text').string

answered Jul 05 '12 at 19:34

Thiem Nguyen

6,345
7
30
50

1

This finds only the first `` element, regardless of position. – Colin Dunklau Jul 05 '12 at 19:36
2

I had forgotten about BeautifulSoup! Didn't know that it could parse XML. Actually, I looked on their docs and you parse xml by adding an extra parameter of 'xml', i.e., `soup = BeautifulSoup('your_XML_string', 'xml')` – kalaracey Jul 05 '12 at 19:58

How to get XML tag value in Python

2 Answers2

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