catperson <me@anonymous.invalid> writes: > I am new to programming, though not new to computers. I'm looking to > teach myself Python 3 and am working my way through a tutorial.
Congratulations! Python 3 is a fine language to be your first. Which tutorial are you following? It may be relevant. > At the point I'm at in the tutorial I am tasked with parsing out an > XML file created with a Garmin Forerunner and am just having a > terrible time getting my head around the concepts. Have you worked with manipulating XML documents in the past? If I describe XML as a machine-readable hierarchical data serialisation format, does that sound like noise or are you comfortable that you understand that description? > What I'm looking for is some suggested reading that might give me some > of the theory of operation behind ElementTree and then how to parse > out specific elements. You'll need to understand the principles behind XML, then. Warning: it is not simple! XML is machine-readable, but rarely pleasant for *humans* to read or understand. > I'm hoping with enough reading I can experiment and work my way > through the problem and end up with a hopefully clear understanding of > the ElementTree module and Dictionairies. XML is a standard – a large number of standards, really – from the W3 Consortium. They have a good overview of the “core” of XML <URL:http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/core>. There are countless XML formats though; XML is a markup language to use as a basis for constructing data serialisation formats. You need to know what the specific format (called a “schema”) is before you can expect to make sense of it, and so in order to understand what's in the document you need a description of the specific schema from whoever wrote the document. General XML tutorials do exist; here is one comprehensive one <URL:http://www.xmlobjective.com/category/guide/>. You'll likely want to learn more about the specifics of whatever XML format is being used, though, before going much beyond the basic principles. -- \ “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in | `\ choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” —John | _o__) Kenneth Galbraith, 1962-03-02 | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list