Parse XML in python

Question

I am partway through pasing xml in python but have run into a bit of a stumbling block with the xml I am trying to render I am using xml.dom.minidom and I can get the xml no worries that bit is easy just the place I am getting it from is messing about with weird syntax what I am getting is something like this.

<enclosure name="link1" url="http://google.co.uk/vid.mp4" type="video/mp4" />

What I am strugling to do with the code bellow is get a way to extract the string from the url attribute I have googled and found nothing. I thought someone with more experience in xml would have an idea about how to do this. Bellow is the code I have so far for this section

files = urllib2.urlopen(x)
data = files.read()
files.close()

dom = parseString(data)

xmlTag = dom.getElementsByTagName('enclosure')[0].toxml()
print xmlTag

That looks more like HTML you're trying to parse - are you sure you're parsing XML? — Jon Clements
– Jon Clements, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 22:10
yea I am sure it's XML it's a rss feed containing videos. I know the difference between HTML and XML. I used the name link as an example it's actually called enclosure. All the other elements are the same as XML — bobthemac
– bobthemac, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 22:11
Heres what is at the top of the doc if you don't believe me <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> — bobthemac
– bobthemac, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 22:17
No worries - not like I didn't believe you - just that your original post had enough ambiguity to require clarification - and someone had to ask for that :) — Jon Clements
– Jon Clements, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 22:21

Nir Alfasi · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-20 22:21:44Z

2

You can use BeautifulSoup:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

xml = '<enclosure name="link1" url="http://google.co.uk/vid.mp4" type="video/mp4" />'
parsed_xml= BeautifulSoup(xml)
print parsed_xml.enclosure['url']

OUTPUT

http://google.co.uk/vid.mp4

answered Jul 20, 2014 at 22:21

Nir Alfasi

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1 Comment

bobthemac Over a year ago

Thanks mate didn't realise you could use beautiful soup that way.

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