Processing xml document in python using lxml

Processing xml document in python using lxml

In previous entry, I discussed about libxml2. Now, I am going to discuss about lxml, which in my opinion is awesome. I really appreciate the developer team that create lxml. It makes processing xml document easier.
The best way to get it by going to this link and choose the appropriate version. As soon as you installed lxml, try to use it. Here is a sample of how to use lxml.

from lxml import etree
import sys

def getChildInfo(child):
 return "id: " + child.get("id") + ", data: " + child.text + "\n"

xmlString = "c1c2"
tree = etree.fromstring(xmlString)
children = tree.xpath("//child")
sys.stdout.write(str(len(children)) + "\n")
for el in [ getChildInfo(child) for child in children ]:
 sys.stdout.write(el)

childList = tree.xpath("//child[@id='1']")
sys.stdout.write(getChildInfo(childList[0]))
child = tree.xpath("//child[@id='2']")
sys.stdout.write(getChildInfo(childList[0]))

For more examples and other information about lxml, check out this link.