How to parse XML in Python and LXML?

Here is my project: I am collecting weather data from WeatherBug using RRDTool. I need a simple and efficient way to download weather data from WeatherBug. I used a terribly inefficient bash - script-scraper, but switched to BeautifulSoup. Performance is too slow (it runs on Raspberry Pi), so I need to use LXML.

What I still have:

from lxml import etree doc=etree.parse('weather.xml') print doc.xpath("//aws:weather/aws:ob/aws:temp") 

But I get an error message. Weather.xml:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <aws:weather xmlns:aws="http://www.aws.com/aws"> <aws:api version="2.0"/> <aws:WebURL>http://weather.weatherbug.com/PA/Tunkhannock-weather.html?ZCode=Z5546&amp;Units=0&amp;stat=TNKCN</aws:WebURL> <aws:InputLocationURL>http://weather.weatherbug.com/PA/Tunkhannock-weather.html?ZCode=Z5546&amp;Units=0</aws:InputLocationURL> <aws:ob> <aws:ob-date> <aws:year number="2013"/> <aws:month number="1" text="January" abbrv="Jan"/> <aws:day number="11" text="Friday" abbrv="Fri"/> <aws:hour number="10" hour-24="22"/> <aws:minute number="26"/> <aws:second number="00"/> <aws:am-pm abbrv="PM"/> <aws:time-zone offset="-5" text="Eastern Standard Time (USA)" abbrv="EST"/> </aws:ob-date> <aws:requested-station-id/> <aws:station-id>TNKCN</aws:station-id> <aws:station>Tunkhannock HS</aws:station> <aws:city-state zipcode="18657">Tunkhannock, PA</aws:city-state> <aws:country>USA</aws:country> <aws:latitude>41.5663871765137</aws:latitude> <aws:longitude>-75.9794464111328</aws:longitude> <aws:site-url>http://www.tasd.net/highschool/index.cfm</aws:site-url> <aws:aux-temp units="&amp;deg;F">-100</aws:aux-temp> <aws:aux-temp-rate units="&amp;deg;F">0</aws:aux-temp-rate> <aws:current-condition icon="http://deskwx.weatherbug.com/images/Forecast/icons/cond013.gif">Cloudy</aws:current-condition> <aws:dew-point units="&amp;deg;F">40</aws:dew-point> <aws:elevation units="ft">886</aws:elevation> <aws:feels-like units="&amp;deg;F">41</aws:feels-like> <aws:gust-time> <aws:year number="2013"/> <aws:month number="1" text="January" abbrv="Jan"/> <aws:day number="11" text="Friday" abbrv="Fri"/> <aws:hour number="12" hour-24="12"/> <aws:minute number="18"/> <aws:second number="00"/> <aws:am-pm abbrv="PM"/> <aws:time-zone offset="-5" text="Eastern Standard Time (USA)" abbrv="EST"/> </aws:gust-time> <aws:gust-direction>NNW</aws:gust-direction> <aws:gust-direction-degrees>323</aws:gust-direction-degrees> <aws:gust-speed units="mph">17</aws:gust-speed> <aws:humidity units="%">98</aws:humidity> <aws:humidity-high units="%">100</aws:humidity-high> <aws:humidity-low units="%">61</aws:humidity-low> <aws:humidity-rate>3</aws:humidity-rate> <aws:indoor-temp units="&amp;deg;F">77</aws:indoor-temp> <aws:indoor-temp-rate units="&amp;deg;F">-1.1</aws:indoor-temp-rate> <aws:light>0</aws:light> <aws:light-rate>0</aws:light-rate> <aws:moon-phase moon-phase-img="http://api.wxbug.net/images/moonphase/mphase01.gif">0</aws:moon-phase> <aws:pressure units="&quot;">30.09</aws:pressure> <aws:pressure-high units="&quot;">30.5</aws:pressure-high> <aws:pressure-low units="&quot;">30.08</aws:pressure-low> <aws:pressure-rate units="&quot;/h">-0.01</aws:pressure-rate> <aws:rain-month units="&quot;">0.11</aws:rain-month> <aws:rain-rate units="&quot;/h">0</aws:rain-rate> <aws:rain-rate-max units="&quot;/h">0.12</aws:rain-rate-max> <aws:rain-today units="&quot;">0.09</aws:rain-today> <aws:rain-year units="&quot;">0.11</aws:rain-year> <aws:temp units="&amp;deg;F">41</aws:temp> <aws:temp-high units="&amp;deg;F">42</aws:temp-high> <aws:temp-low units="&amp;deg;F">29</aws:temp-low> <aws:temp-rate units="&amp;deg;F/h">-0.9</aws:temp-rate> <aws:sunrise> <aws:year number="2013"/> <aws:month number="1" text="January" abbrv="Jan"/> <aws:day number="11" text="Friday" abbrv="Fri"/> <aws:hour number="7" hour-24="07"/> <aws:minute number="29"/> <aws:second number="53"/> <aws:am-pm abbrv="AM"/> <aws:time-zone offset="-5" text="Eastern Standard Time (USA)" abbrv="EST"/> </aws:sunrise> <aws:sunset> <aws:year number="2013"/> <aws:month number="1" text="January" abbrv="Jan"/> <aws:day number="11" text="Friday" abbrv="Fri"/> <aws:hour number="4" hour-24="16"/> <aws:minute number="54"/> <aws:second number="19"/> <aws:am-pm abbrv="PM"/> <aws:time-zone offset="-5" text="Eastern Standard Time (USA)" abbrv="EST"/> </aws:sunset> <aws:wet-bulb units="&amp;deg;F">40.802</aws:wet-bulb> <aws:wind-speed units="mph">3</aws:wind-speed> <aws:wind-speed-avg units="mph">1</aws:wind-speed-avg> <aws:wind-direction>S</aws:wind-direction> <aws:wind-direction-degrees>163</aws:wind-direction-degrees> <aws:wind-direction-avg>SE</aws:wind-direction-avg> </aws:ob> </aws:weather> 

I used http://www.xpathtester.com/test to test my xpath and it worked there. But I get an error message:

 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "lxml.etree.pyx", line 2043, in lxml.etree._ElementTree.xpath (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:47570) File "xpath.pxi", line 376, in lxml.etree.XPathDocumentEvaluator.__call__ (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:118247) File "xpath.pxi", line 239, in lxml.etree._XPathEvaluatorBase._handle_result (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:116911) File "xpath.pxi", line 224, in lxml.etree._XPathEvaluatorBase._raise_eval_error (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:116728) lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Undefined namespace prefix 

This is very new to me - Python, XML and LXML. All I want is the observed time and temperature.

Does my problems have anything to do with this aws: prefix in front of everything? What does it mean?

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated!

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2 answers

The problem is all "related to this aws: prefix before everything"; this is the namespace prefix you must define. This is easily achievable, for example:

 print doc.xpath('//aws:weather/aws:ob/aws:temp', namespaces={'aws': 'http://www.aws.com/aws'})[0].text 

The need for this mapping between a namespace prefix to a value is documented at http://lxml.de/xpathxslt.html .

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Try something like this:

 from lxml import etree ns = etree.FunctionNamespace("http://www.aws.com/aws") ns.prefix = "aws" doc=etree.parse('weather.xml') print doc.xpath("//aws:weather/aws:ob/aws:temp")[0].text 

See this link: http://lxml.de/extensions.html

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