On Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at 8:57:15 AM UTC+5:30, catperson wrote: > 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. 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. 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. Most of what I have been able to find in examples that I > can understand use very simplistic XML files and this Garmin file is > many levels of sub-elements and some of those elements have attributes > assigned, like <Activity Sport="Running">. > > 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. > > Thanks for any suggestions in advance.
Suggestions: 1. Learn to use the interpreter interactively; ie (at the least)¹ ie a. Start up python (without a program) b. Play around with trivial expressions c. Explore introspective features - help(), type() dir() 2. Do you know about triple-quoted strings? a. Start small (or trivial) sub-parts of your XML as triple-quoted examples in the interpreter and start throwing them at elementtree b. If they dont work trivialize further; if they work add complexity ----------- ¹ At the least because environments like Idle are more conducive to such playing -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
