Here's an lxml snippet that extracts an attribute as well as element text (your question was a little ambiguous about which one you needed, so I'm including both):
from lxml import etree
doc = etree.parse(filename)
memoryElem = doc.find('memory')
print memoryElem.text # element text
print memoryElem.get('unit') # attribute
You asked (in a comment on Ali Afshar's answer) whether minidom (2.x, 3.x) is a good alternative. Here's the equivalent code using minidom; judge for yourself which is nicer:
import xml.dom.minidom as minidom
doc = minidom.parse(filename)
memoryElem = doc.getElementsByTagName('memory')[0]
print ''.join( [node.data for node in memoryElem.childNodes] )
print memoryElem.getAttribute('unit')
lxml seems like the winner to me.
Answer from ron rothman on Stack OverflowPython
docs.python.org › 3 › library › xml.etree.elementtree.html
xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API
January 29, 2026 - ET has two classes for this purpose - ElementTree represents the whole XML document as a tree, and Element represents a single node in this tree. Interactions with the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are usually done on the ElementTree level.
Pandas
pandas.pydata.org › docs › reference › api › pandas.read_xml.html
pandas.read_xml — pandas 3.0.1 documentation
String path, path object (implementing os.PathLike[str]), or file-like object implementing a read() function. The string can be a path. The string can further be a URL. Valid URL schemes include http, ftp, s3, and file. ... The XPath to parse required set of nodes for migration to DataFrame.``XPath`` should return a collection of elements and not a single element. Note: The etree parser supports limited XPath expressions. For more complex XPath, use lxml which requires installation. ... The namespaces defined in XML document as dicts with key being namespace prefix and value the URI.
Reading XML file and fetching its attributes value in Python - Stack Overflow
What have you tried? Googling "python xml" yields quite a few really useful results that should point you in the right direction. More on stackoverflow.com
How to read xml file using python? - Stack Overflow
7 Finding xml text content from tag name in python · 0 Convert Python curl response.content bytes object to readable format (json, xml) More on stackoverflow.com
A Roadmap to XML Parsers in Python – Real Python
Heh, this would have been so useful for me a week ago, when I needed to parse an XML. Found xmltodict and it served its purpose beautifully - for what I needed at least. More on reddit.com
14
88
October 19, 2021What should I use for XML parsing in python3?
If you are just doing basic XML parsing, I would recommend using ElementTree. If you are using namespaces, I would recommend switching to lxml.
BeautifulSoup is also good.
More on reddit.com 14
0
April 16, 2012Videos
Parse XML Files with Python - Basics in 10 Minutes
29:27
Python XML Parser Tutorial | Read and Write XML in Python | Python ...
11:20
How to Read XML File in Python (Step-by-Step for Beginners) - YouTube
38:58
Python XML Parsing Tutorial Read And Write XML Files In Python ...
17:34
Full XML Processing Guide in Python - YouTube
OneUptime
oneuptime.com › home › blog › how to work with xml files in python
How to Work with XML Files in Python
January 25, 2026 - Python's xml.etree.ElementTree module is included in the standard library and handles most XML tasks well. # xml_reader.py # Reading and parsing XML files with ElementTree import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET def read_xml_file(filepath): """Read and parse an XML file, returning the root element.""" # Parse the XML file and get the tree structure tree = ET.parse(filepath) # Get the root element of the tree root = tree.getroot() return root def extract_book_data(root): """Extract book information from the XML structure.""" books = [] # Find all 'book' elements under the root for book in root.finda
Top answer 1 of 7
30
Here's an lxml snippet that extracts an attribute as well as element text (your question was a little ambiguous about which one you needed, so I'm including both):
from lxml import etree
doc = etree.parse(filename)
memoryElem = doc.find('memory')
print memoryElem.text # element text
print memoryElem.get('unit') # attribute
You asked (in a comment on Ali Afshar's answer) whether minidom (2.x, 3.x) is a good alternative. Here's the equivalent code using minidom; judge for yourself which is nicer:
import xml.dom.minidom as minidom
doc = minidom.parse(filename)
memoryElem = doc.getElementsByTagName('memory')[0]
print ''.join( [node.data for node in memoryElem.childNodes] )
print memoryElem.getAttribute('unit')
lxml seems like the winner to me.
2 of 7
13
XML
<data>
<items>
<item name="item1">item1</item>
<item name="item2">item2</item>
<item name="item3">item3</item>
<item name="item4">item4</item>
</items>
</data>
Python :
from xml.dom import minidom
xmldoc = minidom.parse('items.xml')
itemlist = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName('item')
print "Len : ", len(itemlist)
print "Attribute Name : ", itemlist[0].attributes['name'].value
print "Text : ", itemlist[0].firstChild.nodeValue
for s in itemlist :
print "Attribute Name : ", s.attributes['name'].value
print "Text : ", s.firstChild.nodeValue
GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › python › reading-and-writing-xml-files-in-python
Reading and Writing XML Files in Python - GeeksforGeeks
January 12, 2026 - from bs4 import BeautifulSoup with open('dict.xml', 'r') as f: data = f.read() bs_data = BeautifulSoup(data, 'xml') for tag in bs_data.find_all('child', {'name':'Frank'}): tag['test'] = "WHAT !!" print(bs_data.prettify()) ... ElementTree is included in Python’s standard library, so no installation is required.
Real Python
realpython.com › python-xml-parser
A Roadmap to XML Parsers in Python – Real Python
September 25, 2023 - Finally, the SAX model just allows for read-only parsing. In short, SAX is cheap in terms of space and time but more difficult to use than DOM in most cases. It works well for parsing very large documents or parsing incoming XML data in real time. Although somewhat less popular in Python, this ...
GitHub
github.com › oxylabs › how-to-parse-xml-in-python
GitHub - oxylabs/how-to-parse-xml-in-python: Follow this in-depth technical tutorial to learn how to parse XML data in Python, what libraries you should use, how to handle invalid XML, and more. · GitHub
Now, let's learn how to parse XML files using these libraries. Fortunately, both minidom and ElementTree provide a built-in function to parse XML files. You can use the parse method of minidom to read XML content from a file.
Author oxylabs
Top answer 1 of 2
5
Use ElementTree:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('Config.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
print(root.findall('.//Log'))
Output:
pawel@pawel-XPS-15-9570:~/test$ python parse_xml.py
[<Element 'Log' at 0x7fb3f2eee9f
2 of 2
0
Below:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
xml = '''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Automation_Config>
<Path>
<Log>.\SERVER.log</Log>
<Flag_Path>.\Flag</Flag_Path>
<files>.\PO</files>
</Path>
</Automation_Config>'''
root = ET.fromstring(xml)
for idx,log_element in enumerate(root.findall('.//Log')):
print('{}) Log value: {}'.format(idx,log_element.text))
output
0) Log value: .\SERVER.log
Rdegges
rdegges.com › 2013 › quickly-extract-xml-data-with-python
Randall Degges - Quickly Extract XML Data with Python
Instead of going the LXML route, ... using Python’s built in xml.etree module. It’s got a (relatively) simple interface that makes parsing simple XML documents fairly easy – and since that’s all I needed to do, it seemed like a good solution. If you’re looking for a quick way to extract XML data, read ...
Zyte
zyte.com › learn › a-practical-guide-to-xml-parsing-with-python
A Practical Guide to Python XML Parsing
No external installation is required, as it’s part of the Python Standard Library. bash ... 2.lxml (optional): A more powerful XML and HTML handling library. It supports XPath and XSLT, making it ideal for complex use cases. bash ... Once you’ve got your environment ready, we’ll proceed to the basic tasks of loading and parsing XML data using Python.
DataCamp
datacamp.com › tutorial › python-xml-elementtree
Python XML Tutorial: Element Tree Parse & Read | DataCamp
December 10, 2024 - Parse and read XML data with Element Tree Python package. Learn how to use xml.etree.elementtree and explore your data through XML today!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python
docs.python-guide.org › scenarios › xml
XML parsing — The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python
can be loaded into a Python dict like this: import xmltodict with open('path/to/file.xml') as fd: doc = xmltodict.parse(fd.read()) and then you can access elements, attributes, and values like this: doc['mydocument']['@has'] # == u'an attribute' doc['mydocument']['and']['many'] # == [u'elements', u'more elements'] doc['mydocument']['plus']['@a'] # == u'complex' doc['mydocument']['plus']['#text'] # == u'element as well' xmltodict also lets you roundtrip back to XML with the unparse function, has a streaming mode suitable for handling files that don’t fit in memory, and supports XML namespaces.
freeCodeCamp
freecodecamp.org › news › how-to-parse-xml-in-python-without-using-external-libraries
How to Parse XML in Python Without Using External Libraries
November 12, 2025 - The xml.etree.ElementTree module works well enough for most XML parsing needs, and it's always available in Python's standard library. For more advanced XML navigation and selection, you can explore XPath expressions. XPath works well for selecting nodes in an XML document and can be very useful for complex structures. We’ll cover this in another tutorial. Until then, happy parsing! ... I'm a self-taught programmer and a technical writer from India. I enjoy reading, writing, and coding.
ScrapingAnt
scrapingant.com › blog › python-parse-xml
How to Parse XML in Python | ScrapingAnt
August 2, 2024 - import codecs with codecs.open("example.xml", "r", encoding="utf-8") as file: content = file.read() This approach helps prevent encoding-related parsing errors, especially when dealing with XML files from various sources. By following these best practices, developers can significantly improve the efficiency, reliability, and performance of XML parsing in Python, even when working with large and complex XML documents.
Python
docs.python.org › 3 › library › xml.dom.minidom.html
xml.dom.minidom — Minimal DOM implementation
For compatibility with the OMG IDL language mapping for Python, an attribute foo can also be accessed through accessor methods _get_foo() and _set_foo(). readonly attributes must not be changed; this is not enforced at runtime. The types short int, unsigned int, unsigned long long, and boolean all map to Python integer objects. The type DOMString maps to Python strings. xml.dom.minidom supports either bytes or strings, but will normally produce strings.
LearnPython.com
learnpython.com › blog › read-xml-into-python
How to Read XML Files into Python | LearnPython.com
Learn what XML files are used for and how to read XML files into Python using BeautifulSoup and xmltodict.
Apify
blog.apify.com › python-parse-xml
How to parse XML in Python
July 16, 2025 - In this guide, you’ll learn in detail how to parse XML files in Python. Here, we’ll focus on the ElementTree API, a built-in, simple, lightweight XML processor for parsing XML. Additionally, we’ll explore extracting and parsing data from XML files using Beautiful Soup and LXML. ... Let's first understand XML, its structure, and how an XML parser functions to process and read data from XML files.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/python › a roadmap to xml parsers in python – real python
r/Python on Reddit: A Roadmap to XML Parsers in Python – Real Python
October 19, 2021 - Heh, this would have been so useful for me a week ago, when I needed to parse an XML. Found xmltodict and it served its purpose beautifully - for what I needed at least. ... Nice! Glad to read you found about xmltodict.
Nick Janetakis
nickjanetakis.com › blog › how-i-used-the-lxml-library-to-parse-xml-20x-faster-in-python
How I Used the lxml Library to Parse XML 20x Faster in Python — Nick Janetakis
August 20, 2019 - Using iterparse could be handy for dealing with massive files that don’t fit in memory or even reading it in from a stream using the requests library if it’s the result of an API call. This is starting to get a bit beyond the scope of this blog post but here’s the basics. for book in xml_xmltodict['Catalog']['Book']: print(book)
ScrapingDog
scrapingdog.com › blog › xml-parsing-python
How To Parse XML in Python (Detailed Guide)
May 7, 2025 - In this read, we have practically parsed XML in Python. We have used 2 parsing modules ELEMENTTREE & MINIDOM & discussed each in details.