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How can I parse XML and get instances of a particular node attribute?

Asked 2009-12-16T05:09:24.933
1170

I have many rows in XML and I'm trying to get instances of a particular node attribute.

<foo>
   <bar>
      <type foobar="1"/>
      <type foobar="2"/>
   </bar>
</foo>

How do I access the values of the attribute foobar? In this example, I want "1" and "2".

python xml
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41

lxml.objectify is really simple.

Taking your sample text:

from lxml import objectify
from collections import defaultdict

count = defaultdict(int)

root = objectify.fromstring(text)

for item in root.bar.type:
    count[item.attrib.get("foobar")] += 1

print dict(count)

Output:

{'1': 1, '2': 1}
answered 2009-12-16T10:42:24.623

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