parse xml like a 2 dimentional array

[askalottaqs]

i have an xml document that i need to parse in the most efficient way, the syntax of the document is like this

 <?xml version="1.0" ?> 
- <frameNumber4>
- <v0>
  <X>0.148778095841</X> 
  <Y>-0.987688362598</Y> 
  <Z>-0.0483409352601</Z> 
  </v0>
- <v1>
  <X>0.126558214426</X> 
  <Y>-0.987688362598</Y> 
  <Z>-0.0919499248266</Z> 
  </v1>
etc....

so i need to parse this as in im accessing <v0><X>, is this possible?

i know i can do it in a manner where i take the v0 and parse it again to get the X, but i was wondering if there was a more efficient way of direct access to a 2nd level member

on the other hand, i know this should be a really dumb question, but how do i get the value of the element, and not the whole xml, all i know of is the method toxml which gives me the whole <Z>-0.0919499248266</Z>

and here's the code im using so far in case it should come in handy :)

from xml.dom.minidom import parse
dom = parse('D:\\newCache\\pSphere2-004.xml')
for node in dom.getElementsByTagName('v0'): 
    print node.toxml()
 
 

[bvdet]

Following are a couple of ways to get the data in a usable form:

from xml.dom import minidom
 
doc = minidom.parse('your.xml')
 
def get_XYZ(elem):
    x = float(elem.getElementsByTagName("X")[0].firstChild.data)
    y = float(elem.getElementsByTagName("Y")[0].firstChild.data)
    z = float(elem.getElementsByTagName("Z")[0].firstChild.data)
    return x,y,z    
 
# Get document element matching a given tag name
print get_XYZ(doc.getElementsByTagName("v0")[0])
print get_XYZ(doc.getElementsByTagName("v1")[0])
 
def get_XYZ1(name):
    output = []
    for node in doc.getElementsByTagName(name):
        t = node.firstChild.nextSibling
        while t:
            s = repr(t).strip()
            if not '\\n' in s:
                output.append([name, str(t.localName), float(t.firstChild.data)])
            t = t.nextSibling
    return output
 
print get_XYZ1('v0')
print get_XYZ1('v1')

Output:

>>> (0.14877809584099999, -0.98768836259799997, -0.048340935260099999)
(0.12655821442599999, -0.98768836259799997, -0.091949924826599999)
[['v0', 'X', 0.14877809584099999], ['v0', 'Y', -0.98768836259799997], ['v0', 'Z', -0.048340935260099999]]
[['v1', 'X', 0.12655821442599999], ['v1', 'Y', -0.98768836259799997], ['v1', 'Z', -0.091949924826599999]]
>>> 

[askalottaqs]

seriously thank you! i cant thank you enough,

but if i may ask one more thing, i really looked around the internet for good documentation, noone even mentioned the ".data", what source do you recommend??

[bvdet]

seriously thank you! i cant thank you enough,

but if i may ask one more thing, i really looked around the internet for good documentation, no one even mentioned the ".data", what source do you recommend??

I have found a few simple parsing examples on the internet, and I use Python Essential Reference and Python documentation for reference, which are both very basic. The data attribute is only available for text nodes. I am trying to learn XML parsing also. It helps to know XML. There are many online resources on XML, DOM and SAX.