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Can't find elements using ElementTree find method

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Tue Aug 31 05:00:41 EDT 2010 
Brendan Simon (eTRIX), 31.08.2010 10:49:
>   I am trying to use ElementTree (with Python 2.7) and can't seem to find
> elements at the top level.  The find() and findall() methods seem to
> find elements within the top level, but not if it the elements are at
> the top level.
>
> How do I find top level elements ??
> Here is my code.
>
>      import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
>
>      xml = '''\
>      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252" ?>
>      <components>
>        <component>
>          <name>Fred</name>
>          <location>Australia</location>
>        </component>
>      </components>
>      '''
>
>      root = ET.fromstring( xml )
>
>      ### This pattern is not found :(
>      comps = root.find( './/components' )

"." matches the current element, so the path expression looks for all 
"components" nodes *below* the current element.

You can either wrap the root in an ElementTree and search globally (i.e. 
without the leading "."), or you can test the root node yourself.

Stefan
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