Question

I want to read simple excel xml file to dictionary. I have tried to use xlrd 7.1 but it returns format errors. Now i’m trying to use xml.etree.ElementTree and also without success. I can’t change structure of .xml file. Here my code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
  -<Styles>
    -<Style ss:Name="Normal" ss:ID="Default">
      <Alignment ss:Vertical="Bottom"/>
      <Borders/>
      <Font ss:FontName="Verdana"/>
      <Interior/>
      <NumberFormat/>
      <Protection/>
    </Style> -<Style ss:ID="s22">
      <NumberFormat ss:Format="General Date"/>
    </Style>
  </Styles> -<Worksheet ss:Name="Linkfeed">
    -<Table>
      -<Row>
        -<Cell>
          <Data ss:Type="String">ID</Data>
        </Cell> -<Cell>
          <Data ss:Type="String">URL</Data>
        </Cell>
      </Row> -<Row>
        -<Cell>
          <Data ss:Type="String">22222</Data>
        </Cell> -<Cell>
          <Data ss:Type="String">Hello there</Data>
        </Cell>
      </Row>
    </Table>
  </Worksheet>
</Workbook>

Reading:

import xml.etree.cElementTree as etree

def xml_to_list(fname):
        with open(fname) as xml_file:
                tree = etree.parse(xml_file)

                for items in tree.getiterator(tag="Table"):
                        for item in items: # Items is None!
                                print item.text

Update, now it works, but how to exclude junk?

def xml_to_list(fname):
        with open(fname) as xml_file:
                tree = etree.iterparse(xml_file)
                for item in tree:
                        print item[1].text

Answer 1

Exclude “junk” with an if-statement:

def xml_to_list(fname):
    with open(fname) as xml_file:
            tree = etree.iterparse(xml_file)
            for item in tree:
                 if item[1].text.strip() != '-':
                        print item[1].text