Question

I am looking for a way to extract all information available in a xml file to a flat file or a database.

For example

<r>
                <P>
                    <color val="1F497D"/>
                </P>
                <t val="123" val2="234">TEST REPORT</t>
</r>

I would want this as

r
P
color,val,1f497d
t,val,123
t,val2,234

Any pointers on how to go about this in python?

Answer 1

Install lxml then:

>>> from lxml import etree
>>> parser = etree.XMLParser(remove_blank_text=True)
>>> parsed_xml = etree.XML(s,parser)
>>> for i in parsed_xml.iter('*'):
...    print i.tag
...    for x in i.items():
...       print '%s,%s' % (x[0],x[1])
...
r
P
color
val,1F497D
t
val,123
val2,234

I’ll leave it up to you to format the output.