XML Parsing: Using MINIDOM Vs Element Tree (etree) in Python

Parsing XML means by using a program we generate an internal representation of serialized XML tags. It forms a tree structure internally in memory which is easy to maintain.

Sample XML Code: sample.xml

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=” UTF-8”?>
<person id=”001”>
<fname>Ram</fname>
<lname>kumar</lname>
<home resident=”local”>Delhi</home>
<salary>1000</salary>
</person>
<?xml>

Let’s see how MINIDOM parse XML:

It is a library provided by python which is a minimal implementation of a Document object model.
Step1: from xml.dom import minidom //Import minidom library
Step2: root=minidom.parse(‘sample.xml’) //take file as input and parse
Step3: print(root)

Output: < xml.dom.minidom.Document object at 0x03A5B308>
Once you execute this we will be able to devide XML file and retrieve the required data.

Finding Element of Interest using getElementByTagName:
Tag=root.getElementbyTagName(‘home’)[0] // I have put [0] for one output
print(Tag)

Output: < DOM Element: item at 0xc4bc00>
To access value of attribute
data=minidom.parse(‘sample.xml’)
tag=data.getElementbyTagName(‘home’)
print(tag[0].attributes(‘resident’).value)

Output: local
To retrieve data present in these tags
Print(tag[0].firstchild.data)

Output: Delhi
Now Let’s come across Element Tree implementation:
(with same xml code)
First using Parse() function:
Step1: import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
Step2: tree=ET.parse(‘sample.xml’)
Step3: root=tree.getroot()
Step4: print(root)

Output: <Element ‘metadata’ at 0x03A5B308>
Fetching tags using loop
for x in root[0]
print (x.tag, x.attrib)

Output: fname {} lname {} home{‘resident’:’local’} salary {}
If want to print value stored in tags
for x in root[0]
print(x.text)

Output:
Ram Kumar Delhi 1000
Modifying XML File:
The elements present in xml file can be manipulated by using set() function. Let us see how?
for lname in root.iter(‘lname’):
New_lname=str(lname.text)+’nath’
lname.text=str(New_lname)
tree.write()
Output: The last name will be added with nath
Performance comparison b/w minidom and element tree