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can we search multiple pattern using etree findall() in xml?

For my case, I have to find few elements in the XML file and update their values using the text attribute. For that, I have to search xml element A, B and C. My project is using xml.etree and python language. Currently I am using:
self.get_root.findall(H/A/T)
self.get_root.findall(H/B/T)
self.get_root.findall(H/C/T)
The sample XML file:
<H><A><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></A></T>
<H><B><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></B></T>
<H><C><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></C></T>
As we can notice, only the middle element in the path is different. Is there a way to optimize the code using something like self.get_root.findall(H|(A,B,C)|T)? Any guidance in the right direction will do! Thanks!
I went through the similar question: XPath to select multiple tags but it didn't work for my case
Update: maybe regular expression inside the findall()?

The html in your question is malformed; assuming it's properly formatted (like below), try this:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
data = """<root>
<H><A><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></A></H>
<H><B><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></B></H>
<H><C><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></C></H>
</root>"""
doc = ET.fromstring(data)
for item in doc.findall('.//H//T'):
item.text = "modified text"
print(ET.tostring(doc).decode())
Output:
<root>
<H><A><T>modified text</T></A></H>
<H><B><T>modified text</T></B></H>
<H><C><T>modified text</T></C></H>
</root>

XML parsing in Python using Python 2 or 3

I'm just trying to write a simple program to allow me to parse some of the following XML.
So far in following examples I am not getting the results I'm looking for.
I encounter many of these XML files and I generally want the info after a handful of tags.
What's the best way using elementtree to be able to do a search for <Id> and grab what ever info is in that tag. I was trying things like
for Reel in root.findall('Reel'):
... id = Reel.findtext('Id')
... print id
Is there a way just to look for every instance of <Id> and grab the urn: etc that comes after it? Some code that traverses everything and looks for <what I want> and so on.
This is a very truncated version of what I usually deal with.
This didn't get what I wanted at all. Is there an easy just to match <what I want> in any XML file and get the contents of that tag, or do i need to know the structure of the XML well enough to know its relation to Root/child etc?
<Reel>
<Id>urn:uuid:632437bc-73f9-49ca-b687-fdb3f98f430c</Id>
<AssetList>
<MainPicture>
<Id>urn:uuid:46afe8a3-50be-4986-b9c8-34f4ba69572f</Id>
<EditRate>24 1</EditRate>
<IntrinsicDuration>340</IntrinsicDuration>
<EntryPoint>0</EntryPoint>
<Duration>340</Duration>
<FrameRate>24 1</FrameRate>
<ScreenAspectRatio>2048 858</ScreenAspectRatio>
</MainPicture>
<MainSound>
<Id>urn:uuid:1fce0915-f8c7-48a7-b023-36e204a66ed1</Id>
<EditRate>24 1</EditRate>
<IntrinsicDuration>340</IntrinsicDuration>
<EntryPoint>0</EntryPoint>
<Duration>340</Duration>
</MainSound>
</AssetList>
</Reel>
#Mata that worked perfectly, but when I tried to use that for different values on another XML file I fell flat on my face. For instance, what about this section of a file.I couldn't post the whole thing unfortunately. What if I want to grab what comes after KeyId?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?><DCinemaSecurityMessage xmlns="http://www.digicine.com/PROTO-ASDCP-KDM-20040311#" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:enc="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#">
<!-- Generated by Wailua Version 0.3.20 -->
<AuthenticatedPublic Id="ID_AuthenticatedPublic">
<MessageId>urn:uuid:7bc63f4c-c617-4d00-9e51-0c8cd6a4f59e</MessageId>
<MessageType>http://www.digicine.com/PROTO-ASDCP-KDM-20040311#</MessageType>
<AnnotationText>SPIDERMAN-3_FTR_S_EN-XX_US-13_51_4K_PH_20070423_DELUXE ~ KDM for Quvis-10010.pem</AnnotationText>
<IssueDate>2007-04-29T04:13:43-00:00</IssueDate>
<Signer>
<dsig:X509IssuerName>dnQualifier=BzC0n/VV/uVrl2PL3uggPJ9va7Q=,CN=.deluxe-admin-c,OU=.mxf-j2c.ca.cinecert.com,O=.ca.cinecert.com</dsig:X509IssuerName>
<dsig:X509SerialNumber>10039</dsig:X509SerialNumber>
</Signer>
<RequiredExtensions>
<Recipient>
<X509IssuerSerial>
<dsig:X509IssuerName>dnQualifier=RUxyQle0qS7qPbcNRFBEgVjw0Og=,CN=SM.QuVIS.com.001,OU=QuVIS Digital Cinema,O=QuVIS.com</dsig:X509IssuerName>
<dsig:X509SerialNumber>363</dsig:X509SerialNumber>
</X509IssuerSerial>
<X509SubjectName>CN=SM MD LE FM.QuVIS_CinemaPlayer-3d_10010,OU=QuVIS,O=QuVIS.com,dnQualifier=3oBfjTfx1me0p1ms7XOX\+eqUUtE=</X509SubjectName>
</Recipient>
<CompositionPlaylistId>urn:uuid:336263da-e4f1-324e-8e0c-ebea00ff79f4</CompositionPlaylistId>
<ContentTitleText>SPIDERMAN-3_FTR_S_EN-XX_US-13_51_4K_PH_20070423_DELUXE</ContentTitleText>
<ContentKeysNotValidBefore>2007-04-30T05:00:00-00:00</ContentKeysNotValidBefore>
<ContentKeysNotValidAfter>2007-04-30T10:00:00-00:00</ContentKeysNotValidAfter>
<KeyIdList>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:9851b0f6-4790-0d4c-a69d-ea8abdedd03d</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:8317e8f3-1597-494d-9ed8-08a751ff8615</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:5d9b228d-7120-344c-aefc-840cdd32bbfc</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:1e32ccb2-ab0b-9d43-b879-1c12840c178b</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:44d04416-676a-2e4f-8995-165de8cab78d</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:906da0c1-b0cb-4541-b8a9-86476583cdc4</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:0fe2d73a-ebe3-9844-b3de-4517c63c4b90</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:862fa79a-18c7-9245-a172-486541bef0c0</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:aa2f1a88-7a55-894d-bc19-42afca589766</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:59d6eeff-cd56-6245-9f13-951554466626</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:14a13b1a-76ba-764c-97d0-9900f58af53e</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:ccdbe0ae-1c3f-224c-b450-947f43bbd640</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:dcd37f10-b042-8e44-bef0-89bda2174842</KeyId>
<KeyId>urn:uuid:9dd7103e-7e5a-a840-a15f-f7d7fe699203</KeyId>
</KeyIdList>
</RequiredExtensions>
<NonCriticalExtensions/>
</AuthenticatedPublic>
<AuthenticatedPrivate Id="ID_AuthenticatedPrivate"><enc:EncryptedKey xmlns:enc="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#">
<enc:EncryptionMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#rsa-oaep-mgf1p">
<ds:DigestMethod xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/>
</enc:EncryptionMethod>

The expression Reel.findtext('Id') only matches direct children of Reel. If you want to find all Id tags in your xml document, you can just use:
ids = [id.text for id in Reel.findall(".//Id")]
This would give you a list of all text nodes of all Id tags which are children of Reel.
edit:
Your updated example uses namespaces, in this case KeyId is in the default namespace (http://www.digicine.com/PROTO-ASDCP-KDM-20040311#), so to search for it you need to include it in your search:
from xml.etree import ElementTree
doc = ElementTree.parse('test.xml')
nsmap = {'ns': 'http://www.digicine.com/PROTO-ASDCP-KDM-20040311#'}
ids = [id.text for id in doc.findall(".//ns:KeyId", namespaces=nsmap)]
print(ids)
...
The xpath subset ElementTree supports is rather limited. If you want a more complete support, you should use lxml instead, it's xpath support is way more complete.
For example, using xpath to search for all KeyId tags (ignoring namespaces) and returning their text content directly:
from lxml import etree
doc = etree.parse('test.xml')
ids = doc.xpath(".//*[local-name()='KeyId']/text()")
print(ids)
...

It sounds like XPath might be right up your alley - it will let you query your XML document for exactly what you're looking for, as long as you know the structure.

Here's what I needed to do. This works for finding whatever I need.
for node in tree.getiterator():
... if 'KeyId' in node.tag:
... mylist = node.tag
... print(mylist)
...

Targeting specific sub-elements when parsing XML with Python

I'm working on building a simple parser to handle a regular data feed at work. This post, XML to csv(-like) format , has been very helpful. I'm using a for loop like in the solution, to loop through all of the elements/subelements I need to target but I'm still a bit stuck.
For instance, my xml file is structured like so:
<root>
<product>
<identifier>12</identifier>
<identifier>ab</identifier>
<contributor>Alex</contributor>
<contributor>Steve</contributor>
</product>
<root>
I want to target only the second identifier, and only the first contributor. Any suggestions on how might I do that?
Cheers!

The other answer you pointed to has an example of how to turn all instances of a tag into a list. You could just loop through those and discard the ones you're not interested in.
However, there's a way to do this directly with XPath: the mini-language supports item indexes in brackets:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
document = etree.parse(open("your.xml"))
secondIdentifier = document.find(".//product/identifier[2]")
firstContributor = document.find(".//product/contributor[1]")
print secondIdentifier, firstContributor
prints
'ab', 'Alex'
Note that in XPath, the first index is 1, not 0.
ElementTree's find and findall only support a subset of XPath, described here. Full XPath, described in brief on W3Schools and more fully in the W3C's normative document is available from lxml, a third-party package, but one that is widely available. With lxml, the example would look like this:
import lxml.etree as etree
document = etree.parse(open("your.xml"))
secondIdentifier = document.xpath(".//product/identifier[2]")[0]
firstContributor = document.xpath(".//product/contributor[1]")[0]
print secondIdentifier, firstContributor

Python search data within all XML elements

Newbie - I am trying to use lxml to find "error" in any element (sample XML file below, but it should work regardless to how nested the tags are):
<test>
<test1>
error
</test1>
<test2>
<test3>
error
</test3>
</test2>
</test>
So far it seems that lxml is only capable of searching for tags and not the data within the tags - is this correct?

Are you asking if there's a built-in function to search the text in an element? It's pretty simple to write your own search routine using lxml's etree parser. For example:
test.xml
<test>
<test1>
error
</test1>
<test2>
<test3>
error
</test3>
</test2>
</test>
And from the command line:
>>> import lxml.etree as etree
>>> for event, element in etree.iterparse("test.xml"):
... # Print the tag of a matching element
... if element.text.strip() == "error":
... print element.tag
...
test1
test3
EDIT: If you end up going this route and don't need to muck about with XML namespaces I recommend you check out xml.etree.cElementTree instead of lxml.etree. It's included in the Python standard modules and is on par or slightly faster than lxml.etree.

Reading text from XML nodes using Python's libxml2

I am a first time XPath user and need to be able to get the text values of these different elements.. for instance time, title, etc.. I am using the libxml2 module in Python and so far have not had much luck getting just the values of the text I need. The code below here only returns the element tags.. i need the values.. any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
I'm using this code:
doc = libxml2.parseDoc(xmlOutput)
result = doc.xpathEval('//*')
With the following document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE SCAN_LIST_OUTPUT SYSTEM "https://qualysapi.qualys.com/api/2.0/fo/sca/scan_list_output.dtd">
<SCAN_LIST_OUTPUT>
<RESPONSE>
<DATETIME>2012-01-22T01:21:53Z</DATETIME>
<SCAN_LIST>
<SCAN>
<REF>scan/2343423</REF>
<TYPE>Scheduled</TYPE>
<TITLE><![CDATA[customer 1 5/20/2012]]></TITLE>
<USER_LOGIN>user1</USER_LOGIN>
<LAUNCH_DATETIME>2012-02-21T04:11:05Z</LAUNCH_DATETIME>
<STATUS>
<STATE>Finished</STATE>
</STATUS>
<TARGET><![CDATA[13.3.3.2, 13.8.8.10, 13.10.12.60, 13.10.12.11...]]></TARGET>
</SCAN>
</SCAN_LIST>
</RESPONSE>
</SCAN_LIST_OUTPUT>

You can call getContent() on each returned xmlNode object to retrieve the associated text. Note that this is recursive -- to non-recursively access text content in libxml2, you'll want to retrieve the associated text node under the element, and call .getContent() on that.
That said, this would be easier if you used lxml.etree (a higher-level Python API, still backing into the C libxml2 library) instead of the Python libxml2; in that case, it's simply element.text to access the associated content as a string.

Have a look at Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python 3, Chapter 12. XML
The chapter starts with short course to XML (general talk but with the Atom Syndication Feed example), then it continues with the standard xml.etree.ElementTree and continues with third party lxml that implements more with the same interface (full XPATH 1.0, based on libxml2).