Access or modify text in drawings objects within a Word DocX using python

Question

Someone has drawn a shape in a document that I need to manipulate. I iterated over all the inline_shapes and can't see to get to the text within each of the results. I was able to confirm the text exists in the doc using BeautifulSoup and pulling out the XML node the text is in. I also confirmed the text is not part of the tables or the paragraphs objects in the doc.

Is there a way to pull text from within a shape in a doc If not, is there a way to manipulate the XML directly?

Note: We can see the data in doc.inline_shapes.part.blob but still can't figure out how to iterate through that data and/or edit the information in that shape....

blob output

" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" o:spt="100" 
path="m325444,l1952625,r,l1952625,8502650,,8502650,,325444c,145706,145706,,325444,xe" stroked="f" 
strokeweight="1pt" style="position:absolute;left:0;text-align:left;margin-left:0;margin-
top:0;width:153.75pt;height:669.5pt;flip:x;z-index:251654145;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square;mso-width-
percent:0;mso-height-percent:0;mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:0;mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0;mso-position-horizontal:left;mso-position-horizontal-relative:margin;mso-position-vertical:absolute;mso-position-vertical-relative:text;mso-width-percent:0;mso-height-percent:0;mso-width-relative:margin;mso-height-relative:margin;v-text-anchor:top" w14:anchorId="572A9A9E"><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/><v:formulas/><v:path arrowok="t" o:connectangles="0,0,0,0,0,0,0" 
o:connectlocs="325444,0;1952625,0;1952625,0;1952625,8502650;0,8502650;0,325444;325444,0" 
o:connecttype="custom" textboxrect="0,0,1952625,8502650"/><v:textbox><w:txbxContent><w:p .... 
[content is in the w:p block]

Answer 1

xpath function worked to find the data and change it. Seems like we can only clear it or replace it though .remove() doesn't seem to remove the node/space/new-line entirely.

Using the xpath function allows one to get to the node within the shape.

    txbx = doc.inline_shapes._body.xpath('//w:txbxContent')
    for tx_idx, tx in enumerate(txbx[0]):
        children = tx.getchildren()
        for child_idx, child in enumerate(children):
            if child.text and child.text == 'REMOVE':
               print(child.text)

It seems like you have to find the text via enumeration, but then return to the root (txbx in the example above) and make the change on that variable. For example:

txbx[0][idx].getparent().remove(txbx[0][idx])