[Tutor] A somewhat easier way to parse XML

[Max Noel]

On Jan 19, 2005, at 03:58, David Rock wrote:

> For me, it seems that the way you are supposed to interact with an XML
> DOM is to already know what you are looking for, and in theory, you
> _should_ know ;-)

	Indeed. The problem is, even if I know what I'm looking for, the  
problem remains that given the following document,

<foo>
	<bar>baz</bar>
</foo>

	If I want to get "baz", the command is (assuming a DOM object has been  
created):

doc.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("bar")[0].childNodes[0].nodeVal 
ue

	Quoting from memory there, it may not be entirely correct. However,  
the command has more characters than the document itself. Somehow I  
feel it'd be a bit more elegant to use:

doc["bar"]

(or depending on the implementation, doc["foo"]["bar"])

	Don't you think?

> Still, I can't help wishing I had a simple way to create a dict from a
> DOM. From a Python perspective, that seems more "Pythonic" to me as
> well. I guess it's just a different way of looking at it.

	I can't help but think that from the perspective of any other  
language, that would feel more [language]-ic as well ;)

-- Max
maxnoel_fr at yahoo dot fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting  
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a  
perfect, immortal machine?"