Accesing values in xml file with namespaces in python 2.7 lxml

Question

I'm following this link to try to get values of several tags:

Parsing XML with namespace in Python via 'ElementTree'

In this link there is no problem to access to the root tag like this:

import sys
from lxml import etree as ET


doc = ET.parse('file.xml')

namespaces_rdf = {'rdf': 'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'} # add more as needed
namespaces_dcat = {'dcat': 'http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#'} # add more as needed
namespaces_dct = {'dct': 'http://purl.org/dc/terms/'}

print doc.findall('rdf:RDF', namespaces_rdf)
print doc.findall('dcat:Dataset', namespaces_dcat)
print doc.findall('dct:identifier', namespaces_dct)

OUTPUT:

[]
[<Element {http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#}Dataset at 0x2269b98>]
[]

I get only access to dcat:Dataset, and I can't see how to access the value of rdf:about

And later access to dct:identifier

Of course, once I have accessed to this info, I need to acces to dcat:distribution info

This is my example file, generated with ckanext-dcat:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:dcat="http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#"
>
  <dcat:Dataset rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01">
    <dct:identifier>ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01</dct:identifier>
    <dct:description>FOO-Description</dct:description>
    <dct:title>FOO-title</dct:title>
    <dcat:keyword>keyword1</dcat:keyword>
    <dcat:keyword>keyword2</dcat:keyword>
    <dct:issued rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2014-10-08T08:55:04.566618</dct:issued>
    <dct:modified rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2015-06-25T11:04:10.328902</dct:modified>
    <dcat:distribution>
      <dcat:Distribution rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/f5707551-6bf3-468f-9a96-b4184cc51d1f">
        <dct:title>FOO-title-1</dct:title>
        <dct:description>FOO-Description-1</dct:description>
        <dcat:accessURL>http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/f5707551-6bf3-468f-9a96-b4184cc51d1f/download/myxls.xls</dcat:accessURL>
        <dct:format>XLS</dct:format>
      </dcat:Distribution>
    </dcat:distribution>
    <dcat:distribution>
      <dcat:Distribution rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/74c1acc8-b2b5-441b-afb2-d072d0d00a7f">
        <dct:format>XLS</dct:format>
        <dct:title>FOO-title-2</dct:title>
        <dct:description>FOO-Description-2</dct:description>
        <dcat:accessURL>http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/74c1acc8-b2b5-441b-afb2-d072d0d00a7f/download/myxls.xls</dcat:accessURL>
      </dcat:Distribution>
    </dcat:distribution>
  </dcat:Dataset>
</rdf:RDF>

Any idea on how to access this info?? Thanks

UPDATE: Well, I need to access rdf:about in:

<dcat:Dataset rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01">

so with this code taken from:

Parse xml with lxml - extract element value

for node in doc.xpath('//dcat:Dataset', namespaces=namespaces):
   # Iterate over attributes
   for attrib in node.attrib:
            print '@' + attrib + '=' + node.attrib[attrib]

I get this output:

[<Element {http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#}Dataset at 0x23d8ee0>]
@{http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#}about=http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01

So, the question is:

How can I ask if the attribute is about to take this value, because in other files I have several tags.

UPDATE 2: Fixed how I get about value (clark notations)

for node in doc.xpath('//dcat:Dataset', namespaces=namespaces):
   # Iterate over attributes
   for attrib in node.attrib:
      if attrib.endswith('about'):
        #do my jobs

Well, almost finished, but I have last question: I need to know when I access my

<dct:title>

to which belongs, I have:

<dcat:Dataset rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01">
       <dct:title>FOO-title</dct:title>

<dcat:Distribution rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/f5707551-6bf3-468f-9a96-b4184cc51d1f">
        <dct:title>FOO-title-1</dct:title>

<dcat:Distribution rdf:about="http://www.myweb.com/dataset/ec631628-2f46-4f17-a685-d62a37466c01/resource/74c1acc8-b2b5-441b-afb2-d072d0d00a7f">
        <dct:title>FOO-title-2</dct:title>

If I do something like this I get:

for node in doc.xpath('//dct:title', namespaces=namespaces):
   print node.tag, node.text

{http://purl.org/dc/terms/}title FOO-title
{http://purl.org/dc/terms/}title FOO-title-1
{http://purl.org/dc/terms/}title FOO-title-2

Thanks

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 25 '16 at 20:54

1

Use the xpath() method with namespaces named argument:

namespaces = {
    'rdf': 'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#',
    'dcat': 'http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#',
    'dct': 'http://purl.org/dc/terms/'
}

print(doc.xpath('//rdf:RDF', namespaces=namespaces))
print(doc.xpath('//dcat:Dataset', namespaces=namespaces))
print(doc.xpath('//dct:identifier', namespaces=namespaces))

answered Mar 25 '16 at 20:54

alecxe

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Well, Great!!!, works like a charm, I didn't know xpath, so I take a time to understand it. Thanks – davisoski Mar 25 '16 at 21:04
@davisoski sure, please see http://stackoverflow.com/help/someone-answers. Also look through your previous answers and see if there are answers deserved to be accepted. – alecxe Mar 26 '16 at 13:00

Accesing values in xml file with namespaces in python 2.7 lxml

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