How can I use xmltodict to get items out of an XML file?

Question

I am trying to easily access values from an XML file like this: ``` ABC123 Highlight pen 231 0.56 PQR678 Nietmachine 587 9.99 ..... etc ``` How would I go about getting access to the value `ABC123`? ``` import xmltodict with open('8_1.html') as fd: doc = xmltodict.parse(fd.read()) print(doc[fd]['code']) ```

Accepted Answer

Using your example:

```
import xmltodict

with open('artikelen.xml') as fd:
    doc = xmltodict.parse(fd.read())
```

If you examine `doc`, you'll see it's an `OrderedDict`, ordered by tag:

```
>>> doc
OrderedDict([('artikelen',
              OrderedDict([('artikel',
                            [OrderedDict([('@nummer', '121'),
                                          ('code', 'ABC123'),
                                          ('naam', 'Highlight pen'),
                                          ('voorraad', '231'),
                                          ('prijs', '0.56')]),
                             OrderedDict([('@nummer', '123'),
                                          ('code', 'PQR678'),
                                          ('naam', 'Nietmachine'),
                                          ('voorraad', '587'),
                                          ('prijs', '9.99')])])]))])
```

The root node is called `artikelen`, and there is a subnode `artikel` which is a list of `OrderedDict` objects, so if you want the `code` for every article, you would do:

```
codes = []
for artikel in doc['artikelen']['artikel']:
    codes.append(artikel['code'])

# >>> codes
# ['ABC123', 'PQR678']
```

If you specifically want the `code` only when `nummer` is `121`, you could do this:

```
code = None
for artikel in doc['artikelen']['artikel']:
    if artikel['@nummer'] == '121':
        code = artikel['code']
        break
```

That said, if you're parsing XML documents and want to search for a specific value like that, I would consider using XPath expressions, which are supported by `ElementTree`.

How can I use xmltodict to get items out of an XML file?

Solution

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