On Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at 3:34:15 PM UTC-7, catperson wrote: > On Tue, 31 Mar 2015 21:17:38 -0700 (PDT), Rustom Mody > <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >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)š 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 > >----------- > >š At the least because environments like Idle are more conducive to such > >playing > > I thank everyone for their feedback. I like the above advice and also > Rustom's other comments about learning dictionaries. I'm thinking in > the back of my mind my issue might be more around the dictionary than > ElementTree at this point. > > I'll fill in my situation a little based on the queries back to me. > > I'm using a book, Python Programming Fundamentals by Kent D. Lee. > > http://knuth.luther.edu/~leekent/IntroToComputing/ > > It looks like he has updated his website since I last looked at it. I > know there are many tutorials out there, however, I picked this one > and resolved to complete it start to finish. That means a lot of side > research and reading, which I'm happy to do. > > I've got somewhat of a handle on the basic XML parsing process (my > opinion). The book uses minidom, but my reading suggests that > ElementTree is a better option, so I thought I'd switch to that and > attempt to duplicate the exercise. > > I understand this bit; > > import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree > tree = etree.parse('workout.tcx') > root = tree.getroot() > <snip> > <LatitudeDegrees>34.5225040</LatitudeDegrees> > <LongitudeDegrees>-77.3563351</LongitudeDegrees> <snip> > Jim.
This is on the coast of North Carolina, for anyone curious, just south of Snead's Ferry. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
