[Tutor] small ElementTree problem

[Stefan Behnel]

Alex Hall, 28.01.2011 14:25:
> On 1/28/11, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>> Alex Hall, 28.01.2011 14:09:
>>> On 1/28/11, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>>>> Alex Hall, 27.01.2011 23:23:
>>>>>     self.id=root.find("id").text
>>>>> self.name=root.find("name).text
>>>>
>>>> There's a findtext() method on Elements for this purpose.
>>>>
>>> I thought that was used to search for the text of an element? I want
>>> to get the text, whatever it may be, not search for it. Or am I
>>> misunderstanding the function?
>>
>> What do you think 'find()' does? Use the Source, Luke. ;)
> Here is what I am thinking:
> element.find("tagname"): returns an element with the tag name, the
> first element with that name to be found. You can then use the usual
> properties and methods on this element.
> element.findtext("text"): returns the first element found that has a
> value of "text". Take this example:
> <root>
> <a>some text</a>
> </root>
> Now you get the root, then call:
> root.find("a") #returns the "a" element
> root.findtext("some text") #also returns the "a" element

Ah, ok, then you should read the documentation:

http://docs.python.org/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#xml.etree.ElementTree.Element.findtext

findtext() does what find() does, except that it returns the text value of 
the Element instead of the Element itself.

It basically spells out to "find text of element matching(path)".

Stefan