Parsing XML with Python

Question

I have several large .xml files. I want to parse out the files to do several things.

I want to pull out only:

• XML-/title1 and save it to list A (for example)
• XML-/title2 and save it to list B
• XML-/title3 and save it to list C
• etc, etc

Using Python 2.x which library would be best to import/use. How would I set this up? Any Suggestions?

For Example:

 <PubmedArticle>
    <MedlineCitation Owner="NLM" Status="MEDLINE">
        <PMID Version="1">8981971</PMID>
        <Article PubModel="Print">
            <Journal>
                <ISSN IssnType="Print">0002-9297</ISSN>
                <JournalIssue CitedMedium="Print">
                    <Volume>60</Volume>
                    <Issue>1</Issue>
                    <PubDate>
                        <Year>1997</Year>
                        <Month>Jan</Month>
                    </PubDate>
                </JournalIssue>
                <Title>American journal of human genetics</Title>
                <ISOAbbreviation>Am. J. Hum. Genet.</ISOAbbreviation>
            </Journal>
            <ArticleTitle>mtDNA and Y chromosome-specific polymorphisms in modern Ojibwa: implications about the origin of their gene pool.</ArticleTitle>
            <Pagination>
                <MedlinePgn>241-4</MedlinePgn>
            </Pagination>
            <AuthorList CompleteYN="Y">
                <Author ValidYN="Y">
                    <LastName>Scozzari</LastName>
                    <ForeName>R</ForeName>
                    <Initials>R</Initials>
                </Author>
            </AuthorList>
        <MeshHeadingList>
            <MeshHeading>
                <DescriptorName MajorTopicYN="N">Alleles</DescriptorName>
            </MeshHeading>
            <MeshHeading>
                <DescriptorName MajorTopicYN="Y">Y Chromosome</DescriptorName>
            </MeshHeading>
        </MeshHeadingList>
        <OtherID Source="NLM">PMC1712541</OtherID>
    </MedlineCitation>
</PubmedArticle>

Answer 1

Try look at the lxml module.

To locate the titles you can use Xpath with lxml, or you can use the xml object structure in lxml to "index" you down to the title elements.

Answer 2

Try using Beautiful soup. I have found this library very handy. And as just pointed out, BeautifulStoneSoup specifically is for parsing XML.