CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxmlbeautifulsoupxml-parsing
farmer
farmer

Reputation: 285

BeautifulSoup XML: finding elements by sibling element's text

In the following example, I want to find all titles of books whose prices are 8.99. In other words, I want to find elements' text based on their sibling element's text.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
XML = """<?xml version="1.0">
<library>
    <book>
        <title>The Cat in the Hat</title>
        <author>Dr. Seuss</author>
        <price>7.35</price>
    </book>
    <book>
        <title>Ender's Game</title>
        <author>Orson Scott Card</author>
        <price>8.99</price>
    </book>
    <book>
        <title>Prey</title>
        <author>Michael Crichton</author>
        <price>8.99</price>
    </book>
</library>
"""
soup = BeautifulSoup(XML, "xml")

Surprisingly, the query soup.find({"price": 8.99}).parent will return the wrong book:

<book>
<title>The Cat in the Hat</title>
<author>Dr. Seuss</author>
<price>7.35</price>
</book>

Update

The query [x.parent.find("title").text for x in soup.find_all("price", text = 8.99)] returns the list ["Ender's Game", "Prey"] which is what I wanted. But is this the best way to do it?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 660

Answers (1)

Druta Ruslan
Druta Ruslan

Reputation: 7402

You can use find_previous_sibling().

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
XML = """<?xml version="1.0">
<library>
    <book>
        <title>The Cat in the Hat</title>
        <author>Dr. Seuss</author>
        <price>7.35</price>
    </book>
    <book>
        <title>Ender's Game</title>
        <author>Orson Scott Card</author>
        <price>8.99</price>
    </book>
    <book>
        <title>Prey</title>
        <author>Michael Crichton</author>
        <price>8.99</price>
    </book>
</library>
"""
soup = BeautifulSoup(XML, "xml")

prices = soup.find_all("price", text=8.99)
for price in prices:
    title = price.find_previous_sibling('title')
    print(title)

# and with list comprehension
titles = [price.find_previous_sibling('title').text for price in prices]                                                                                                                                                        
print(titles)

Output

<title>Ender's Game</title>
<title>Prey</title>

# List comprehension
["Ender's Game", 'Prey']

Upvotes: 1

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