Question

Here is some code:

from lxml import etree
url = 'http://www.google.com/ig/api?stock=aapl'
data = etree.parse(url) 
root = data.getroot()
finance = root[0]


def clean(var, num):
    var = str(finance[num].attrib).split("'")[-2]
    print var

I would like to return the variable as an object that I can call later.

I know what the problem is – the str() – but don’t know how to fix it as working with the variable directly doesn’t allow me to to do the necessary manipulations with .attrib and .split

Answer 1

Assuming you want to gather information from XML, do:

data = dict()
for elem in finance:
    data[elem.tag] = elem.attrib['data']

You will get a dictionary in data variable like:

{'symbol': 'AAPL', 'company': 'Apple Inc.', 'currency': 'USD', 'volume': '19145182' ... }

And you’ll be able to access particular pieces of info:

print data['company']