XPath: get only elements with a specific subitem

Question

I have a file that is presented in an XML document in the following format:

<xml xmlns="namespace1" xmlns:ns2="namespace2"> <entry> <id>123</id> <ns2:content name="type">directory</ns2:content> <ns2:content name="numErrors">3</ns2:content> </entry> ... <entry> <id>456</id> <ns2:content name="type">file</ns2:content> <ns2:content name="docState">success</ns2:content> </entry> ... </xml> 

I need to do, using Python lxml, get only those entry objects that represent directories. All entries contain an <ns2:content name="docState"> , but I need to know how to get a list of entry objects, where this object text is directory . I can do this with a few uncomfortable steps, but for this I would prefer a single request. Here's how I will do it step by step:

 #xml_parse.py ns={'ns1':'namespace1','ns2':'namespace2'} for node in tree.xpath("//ns1:entry",namespaces=ns): if node.find("ns2:content[@name='type']").text=="directory": #do stuff with node pass 

Can someone explain how to do this in a for statement instead of using if?

thanks

Answer 1

Use the following XPath expression:

 //ns1:entry[ns2:content[@name='type' and .='directory']]