xml getElementsByTagName w/o recursion?

[Simon Dahlbacka]

Hello,

this is perhaps not directly a python question, but how do I get a
direct child element without going down the tree and possibly find
another element with the same name there?


<foo>
<bar>
<name>This is the interesting part</name>
<baz>
<something>...</something>
<name>this is what I DO NOT want</nameA
</baz>
</bar>
</foo>

I am using xml.dom.minidom and I was thinking along the line of

....
fooNode.childNodes.getNamedNode("name")
....
but that doesn't work..

is the only solution to write an own helper function that iterates the
child nodes and get the correct one?

/Simon

 

[Bill Rubenstein]

Hello,

this is perhaps not directly a python question, but how do I get a
direct child element without going down the tree and possibly find
another element with the same name there?


<foo>
<bar>
<name>This is the interesting part</name>
<baz>
<something>...</something>
<name>this is what I DO NOT want</nameA
</baz>
</bar>
</foo>

I am using xml.dom.minidom and I was thinking along the line of

...
fooNode.childNodes.getNamedNode("name")
...
but that doesn't work..

is the only solution to write an own helper function that iterates the
child nodes and get the correct one?

/Simon

You need to loop through the children of the node and build a list of the nodes
of interest.

Bill R

 

[Chris Herborth]

this is perhaps not directly a python question, but how do I get a
direct child element without going down the tree and possibly find
another element with the same name there?

Install PyXML and use xml.xpath.Evaluate().

<foo>
<bar>
<name>This is the interesting part</name>
<baz>
<something>...</something>
<name>this is what I DO NOT want</nameA
</baz>
</bar>
</foo>

I am using xml.dom.minidom and I was thinking along the line of

...
fooNode.childNodes.getNamedNode("name")
...
but that doesn't work..

# Find all of the <name> children of <bar>:
results = xml.xpath.Evaluate( "/foo/bar/child::name", fooNode )

# xml.xpath.Evaluate() returns a list of results, or []
nameNode = results[0]

Or, if you didn't know what the tags were but you still needed the first
<name> element:

results = xml.xpath.Evaluate( "/descendant::name[position()=1]", fooNode )
nameNode = results[0]

XPath (http://www.w3c.org/TR/xpath) can be a bit tricky to pick up, but it's
_very_ powerful for navigating a DOM tree.