How to extract text between tags?

Question

Python

We have the following code, an XML parser:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

doc = """
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ANSI" ?>
<data>
     <items>
         <item name="item1">1</item>
         <item name="item2">2</item>
         <item name="item3">3</item>
         <item name="item4">4</item>
     </items>
</data>
.----------------------------------------------------------
"""

tree = ET.fromstring(doc)

print(tree.find('.//item[@name="item1"]').text)
print(tree.find('.//item[@name="item4"]').text)

As you can see, it does not start with the main tag, as it ends in other things.
Hence the error:
xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Tell me how (using what) to extract all the text between the and tags?

Answer 1

lxml

>>> import lxml.etree
>>> doc = """
... <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ANSI" ?>
... <data>
...      <items>
...          <item name="item1">1</item>
...          <item name="item2">2</item>
...          <item name="item3">3</item>
...          <item name="item4">4</item>
...      </items>
... </data>
... .----------------------------------------------------------
... """
>>> parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(recover=True)
>>> tree = lxml.etree.fromstring(doc, parser)
>>> [element.text for element in tree.iter('item')]
['1', '2', '3', '4']

Without lxml you can do this:

>>> import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
>>> doc = """
... <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ANSI" ?>
... <data>
...      <items>
...          <item name="item1">1</item>
...          <item name="item2">2</item>
...          <item name="item3">3</item>
...          <item name="item4">4</item>
...      </items>
... </data>
... .----------------------------------------------------------
... """
>>> tree = ET.fromstring(doc.strip('\n-.'))
>>> [element.text for element in tree.iter('item')]
['1', '2', '3', '4']