python and parsing an xml file

Matt Funk mafunk at nmsu.edu
Mon Feb 21 12:30:29 EST 2011


Hi,
I was wondering if someone had some advice:
I want to create a set of xml input files to my code that look as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!-- Settings for the algorithm to be performed                       
                                         -->
<Algorithm>

    <!-- The algorithm type.                                           
                                    -->
    <!-- The supported options are:                                    
                                    -->
    <!--     - Alg0                                                   
                                        -->   
    <!--     - Alg1                                                   
                                        -->
    <Type>Alg1</Type>
   
    <!-- the location/path of the input file for this algorithm       
                                        -->
    <path>./Alg1.in</path>
   
</Algorithm>


<!-- Relevant information during the processing will be written to a
logfile                                 -->
<Logfile>
   
    <!-- the location/path of the logfile (i.e. where to put the
logfile)                                    -->
    <path>c:\tmp</path>
   
    <!-- verbosity level (i.e. how much to print)                       
                                    -->
    <!-- The supported options are:                                    
                                    -->
    <!--     - 0    (nothing printed)                                   
                                        -->   
    <!--     - 1    (print on error)                                   
                                        -->   
    <verbosity>1</verbosity>

</Logfile>


So there are comments, whitespace etc ... in it.
I would like to be able to put everything into some sort of structure
such that i can access it as:
structure['Algorithm']['Type'] == Alg1
I was wondering if there is something out there that does this.
I found and tried a few things:
1) http://code.activestate.com/recipes/534109-xml-to-python-data-structure/
It simply doesn't work. I get the following error:
raise exception
xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: <unknown>:1:2: not well-formed
(invalid token)
But i removed everything from the file except: <?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8"?>
and i still got the error.

Anyway, i looked at ElementTree, but that error out with:
xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: junk after document element: line 19, column 0


Anyway, if anyone can give me advice of point me somewhere i'd greatly
appreciate it.

thanks
matt




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