How To Extract Data From An XML File Using Python

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to extract data from an XML file using Python. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.

XML is widely used for data exchange among various applications and systems over the internet. Let’s explore how we can extract data from an XML file using Python’s built-in ElementTree library.

Example XML file:

<movies>
  <movie id="1">
    <title>The Godfather</title>
    <year>1972</year>
    <director>Francis Ford Coppola</director>
  </movie>
  <movie id="2">
    <title>Pulp Fiction</title>
    <year>1994</year>
    <director>Quentin Tarantino</director>
  </movie>
</movies>

Step 1: Import Required Libraries

First, we will import the ElementTree library; it will be used for parsing the XML file and extracting the required data.

1	import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

Step 2: Load and Parse the XML File

In this step, we will load the XML file and parse its contents using the ElementTree library.

# Load and parse the XML file

tree = ET.parse('movies.xml')

root = tree.getroot()

The parse() function reads the XML file, and the getroot() function returns the root element of the XML tree.

Step 3: Extract Data from the XML File

Now that we have the root element of the XML tree, we can iterate through its child elements and extract the data.

# Iterate through the child elements and extract data

for movie in root:

id = movie.attrib['id']

title = movie.find('title').text

year = movie.find('year').text

director = movie.find('director').text

print(f"Movie ID: {id}, Title: {title}, Year: {year}, Director: {director}")

The attrib attribute contains the element’s attributes as a dictionary. The find() function searches for the specified subelement and returns its first occurrence. The text attribute returns the text content of an element.

Full Code:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET