Question

I’m trying to parse the following XML data:

http://pastebin.com/UcbQQSM2

This is just an example of the 2 types of data I will run into. Companies with the needed address information and companies without the needed information.

From the data I need to collect 3 pieces of information:

1) The Company name

2) The Company street

3) The Company zipcode

I’m able to do this with the following code:

#Creates list of Company names
CompanyList = []
for company in xmldata.findall('company'):
    name = company.find('name').text
    CompanyList.append(name)

#Creates list of Company zipcodes
ZipcodeList = []
for company in xmldata.findall('company'):
    contact_data = company.find('contact-data')
    address1 = contact_data.find('addresses')
    for address2 in address1.findall('address'):
        ZipcodeList.append(address2.find('zip').text)

#Creates list of Company streets
StreetList = []
for company in xmldata.findall('company'):
    contact_data = company.find('contact-data')
    address1 = contact_data.find('addresses')
    for address2 in address1.findall('address'):
        StreetList.append(address2.find('street').text)

But it doesn’t really do what I want it to, and I can’t figure out how to do what I want. I believe it will be some type of ‘if’ statement but I don’t know.

The problem is that where I have:

for address2 in address1.findall('address'):
    ZipcodeList.append(address2.find('zip').text)

and

for address2 in address1.findall('address'):
    StreetList.append(address2.find('street').text)

It only adds to the list the places that actually have a street name or zipcode listed in the XML, but I need a placemark for the companies that also DON’T have that information listed so that my lists match up.

I hope this makes sense. Let me know if I need to add more information.

But, basically, I’m trying to find a way to say if there isn’t a zipcode/street name for the Company put “None” and if there is then put the zipcode/street name.

Any help/guidance is appreciated.

Answer 1

Well I am going to do a bad thing and suggest you use a conditional (ternary) operator.

StreetList.append(address2.find('street').text if address2.find('street').text else 'None')

So this statement says return address2.find(‘street’).text if **address2.find(‘street’) is not empty else return ‘None’.

Additionally you could created a new method to do the same test and call it in both places, note my python is rusty but should get you close:

def returnNoneIfEmpty(testText):
    if testText:
        return testText
    else:
        return 'None'

Then just call it:

StreetList.append(returnNoneIfEmpty(address2.find('street').text))