Python getting element value for specific element

Question

I am attempting to parse the below XML file but having difficulty getting a specific element value. I am trying to specify element 'Item_No_2' to get the related value <v>2222222222</v> but am unable to do it using get.element('Item_No_2'). Am I using the get.element value incorrectly?

XML File:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Data.xsl"?>
<abc>
  <md>
    <mi>
      <datetime>20160822020003</datetime>
      <period>3600</period>
      <it>Item_No_1</it>
      <it>Item_No_2</it>
      <it>Item_No_3</it>
      <it>Item_No_4</it>
      <it>Item_No_5</it>
      <it>Item_No_6</it>
      <it>Item_No_7</it>
      <ovalue>
        <v>1111111111</v>
        <v>2222222222</v>
        <v>3333333333</v>
        <v>4444444444</v>
        <v>5555555555</v>
        <v>6666666666</v>
        <v>7777777777</v>
      </ovalue>
    </mi>
  </md>
</abc>

My Code:

from xml.etree.ElementTree import parse

doc = parse('test.xml').getroot()

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/'):
    print(element.text)

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/'):
    print(element.text)

The current output gets them separately but I can't seem to understand how to call a specific element value.

Output:

20160822020003
3600
Item_No_1
Item_No_2
Item_No_3
Item_No_4
Item_No_5
Item_No_6
Item_No_7


1111111111
2222222222
3333333333
4444444444
5555555555
6666666666
7777777777

Tried this but did not work:

for element in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/'):
    print(element.get('Item_No_1'))

Asparagus

Answer 1

There is no Item_No_1 at the elements that are found by doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/').

I think what you may try to do is get both lists

items = [e.text for e in doc.findall('md/mi/it')]
values = [e.text for e in doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')]

Then find the index of the string 'Item_No_1' from items, and then index into values with that number.

Alternatively, zip the two lists together and check when you find one element.

for item,value in zip(doc.findall('md/mi/it'), doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')):
    if item.text == 'Item_No_1':
        print(value.text)

There might be a better way, but those are the first ways that come to mind

Inositol

Thanks for the response. The second alternative with ZIP gives me the wrong output. Provides 3333333 instead of 111111, do you know why? I like the 1st option but can you tell me how I would get the index? – Asparagus

use for item, value in zip(doc.findall('md/mi/it'), doc.findall('md/mi/ovalue/v')): – Cytaster

@Cytaster Thanks, that did the trick to get the output matching the Item. Now I just need to play around some more and figure out how I can consistently get the right match in a larger xml with multiple elements that dont have a variable number of values. Cheers. – Asparagus