Dive Into Python Python for experienced programmers |

## 5.3. Parsing XML

As I was saying, actually parsing an XML document is very simple: one line of code. Where you go from there is up to you.

Example 5.8. Loading an XML document (for real this time)

    >>> from xml.dom import minidom
    >>> xmldoc = minidom.parse('~/diveintopython/common/py/kgp/binary.xml')
    >>> xmldoc
    <xml.dom.minidom.Document instance at 010BE87C>
    >>> print xmldoc.toxml()
    <?xml version="1.0" ?>
    <grammar>
    <ref id="bit">
      <p>0</p>
      <p>1</p>
    </ref>
    <ref id="byte">
      <p><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/>\
    <xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/></p>
    </ref>
    </grammar>

| As we saw in the previous section, this imports the `minidom` module from the `xml.dom` package.
| Here is the one line of code that does all the work: `minidom.parse` takes one argument and returns a parsed representation of the XML document. The argument can be many things; in this case, it's simply a filename of an XML document on my local disk. (To follow along, you'll need to change the path to point to your downloaded examples directory.) But you can also pass a file object, or even a file-like object. We'll take advantage of this flexibility later in this chapter.
| The object returned from `minidom.parse` is a `Document` object, a descendant of the `Node` class. This `Document` object is the root level of a complex tree-like structure of interlocking Python objects that completely represent the XML document we passed to `minidom.parse`.
| `toxml` is a method of the `Node` class (and is therefore available on the `Document` object we got from `minidom.parse`). `toxml` prints out the XML that this `Node` represents. For the `Document` node, this prints out the entire XML document.

Now that we have an XML document in memory, we can start traversing through it.

Example 5.9. Getting child nodes

    >>> xmldoc.childNodes
    [<DOM Element: grammar at 17538908>]
    >>> xmldoc.childNodes[0]
    <DOM Element: grammar at 17538908>
    >>> xmldoc.firstChild
    <DOM Element: grammar at 17538908>

| Every `Node` has a `childNodes` attribute, which is a list of the `Node` objects. A `Document` always has only one child node, the root element of the XML document (in this case, the `grammar` element).
| To get the first (and in this case, the only) child node, just use regular list syntax. Remember, there is nothing special going on here; this is just a regular Python list of regular Python objects.
| Since getting the first child node of a node is a useful and common activity, the `Node` class has a `firstChild` attribute, which is synonymous with `childNodes[0]`. (There is also a `lastChild` attribute, which is synonymous with `childNodes[-1]`.)

Example 5.10. `toxml` works on any node

    >>> grammarNode = xmldoc.firstChild
    >>> print grammarNode.toxml()
    <grammar>
    <ref id="bit">
      <p>0</p>
      <p>1</p>
    </ref>
    <ref id="byte">
      <p><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/>\
    <xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/></p>
    </ref>
    </grammar>

| Since the `toxml` method is defined in the `Node` class, it is available on any XML node, not just the `Document` element.

Example 5.11. Child nodes can be text

    >>> grammarNode.childNodes
    [<DOM Text node "\n">, <DOM Element: ref at 17533332>, \
    <DOM Text node "\n">, <DOM Element: ref at 17549660>, <DOM Text node "\n">]
    >>> print grammarNode.firstChild.toxml()

    >>> print grammarNode.childNodes[1].toxml()
    <ref id="bit">
      <p>0</p>
      <p>1</p>
    </ref>
    >>> print grammarNode.childNodes[3].toxml()
    <ref id="byte">
      <p><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/>\
    <xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/><xref id="bit"/></p>
    </ref>
    >>> print grammarNode.lastChild.toxml()

| Looking at the XML in `binary.xml`, you might think that the `grammar` has only two child nodes, the two `ref` elements. But you're missing something: the carriage returns! After the `'<grammar>'` and before the first `'<ref>'` is a carriage return, and this text counts as a child node of the `grammar` element. Similarly, there is a carriage return after each `'</ref>'`; these also count as child nodes. So `grammar.childNodes` is actually a list of 5 objects: 3 `Text` objects and 2 `Element` objects.
| The first child is a `Text` object representing the carriage return after the `'<grammar>'` tag and before the first `'<ref>'` tag.
| The second child is an `Element` object representing the first `ref` element.
| The fourth child is an `Element` object representing the second `ref` element.
| The last child is a `Text` object representing the carriage return after the `'</ref>'` end tag and before the `'</grammar>'` end tag.

Example 5.12. Drilling down all the way to text

    >>> grammarNode
    <DOM Element: grammar at 19167148>
    >>> refNode = grammarNode.childNodes[1]
    >>> refNode
    <DOM Element: ref at 17987740>
    >>> refNode.childNodes
    [<DOM Text node "\n">, <DOM Text node "  ">, <DOM Element: p at 19315844>, \
    <DOM Text node "\n">, <DOM Text node "  ">, \
    <DOM Element: p at 19462036>, <DOM Text node "\n">]
    >>> pNode = refNode.childNodes[2]
    >>> pNode
    <DOM Element: p at 19315844>
    >>> print pNode.toxml()
    <p>0</p>
    >>> pNode.firstChild
    <DOM Text node "0">
    >>> pNode.firstChild.data
    u'0'

| As we saw in the previous example, the first `ref` element is `grammarNode.childNodes[1]`, since childNodes[0] is a `Text` node for the carriage return.
| The `ref` element has its own set of child nodes, one for the carriage return, a separate one for the spaces, one for the `p` element, and so forth.
| You can even use the `toxml` method here, deeply nested within the document.
| The `p` element has only one child node (you can't tell that from this example, but look at `pNode.childNodes` if you don't believe me), and it is a `Text` node for the single character `'0'`.
| The `.data` attribute of a `Text` node gives you the actual string that the text node represents. But what is that `'u'` in front of the string? The answer to that deserves its own section.