XML

objective: record XML terminologies

• attributes
• elements

XML sample:

<root>
   <docs>
       <doc id="1">                        # id is attribute of doc
           <text> blahblah </text>         # text is element of doc
       <doc id="3">
           <text> blahblah2 </text>
   </docs>
</root>

To retrieve these elements

docs = root.findall('./docs/doc')
row = []
for doc in docs:
   # retrieve attrib of doc
   id = doc.attrib['id']
   #retrieve element text from doc && record contents using .text
   txt = doc.find('./text').text
   row.append({'id': id, 'text': txt})