Printing XML text file in Python?

Question

I want to print any text between pair of tags <en> as long as x='PERS', I tried that below, but the output was not what I wanted.

XML Sample

<Text>
<PHRASE>
<en x='PERS'> John </en>
<V> Went </V>
<prep> to </prep>
<V> meet </V>
<en x='PERS'> Alex </en>
</PHRASE>
<PHRASE>
<en x='PERS'> Mark </en>
<V> lives </V>
<prep> in </prep>
<en x='LOC'> Florida </en>
</PHRASE>
<PHRASE>
<en x='PERS'> Nick </en>
<V> visited</V>
<en x='PERS'> Anna </en>
</PHRASE>
</TEXT>

I want the output: John-Alex,Nick-Anna. but I got : Mark-Mark. Meaning that I only want to print 2 PERS when they appear in one phrase

This is the code I wrote, I used element tree.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('output.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
print("------------------------PERS-PERS-------------------------------")
PERS_PERScount=0
for phrase in root.findall('./PHRASE'):
    ens = {en.get('x'): en.text for en in phrase.findall('en')}
    if 'PERS' in ens and 'PERS' in ens:
        print("PERS is: {}, PERS is: {} /".format(ens["PERS"], ens["PERS"]))
        #print(ens["ORG"])
        #print(ens["PERS"])
        PERS_PERScount = PERS_PERScount + 1
print("Number of PERS-PERS relation", PERS_PERScount)

I am not sure if the problem is in print or the if condition, or both ?!

Answer 1

You can add a simple if check to increment and print, only when number of en element with attribute x equals "PERS" is 2 (a pair) :

for phrase in root.findall('./PHRASE'):
    # get all inner text of elements where `x` attribute equals `"PERS"`
    names = [p.text.strip() for p in phrase.findall('./en[@x="PERS"]')]

    # if therea are 2 of them, increment counter and print
    if len(names) == 2:
        PERS_PERScount += 1
        print('-'.join(names))

print("Number of PERS-PERS relation: ", PERS_PERScount)

eval.in demo

output :

John-Alex
Nick-Anna
Number of PERS-PERS relation:  2

Answer 2

This:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse('output.xml')

root = tree.getroot()

print("------------------------PERS-PERS-------------------------------")

for phrase in root:
    if phrase.tag == 'PHRASE':
        collected_names = []
        for elt in phrase:
            if elt.tag == 'en':
                if 'x' in elt.attrib and elt.attrib['x'] == 'PERS':
                    collected_names += [elt.text]
        if len(collected_names) >= 2:
            print(collected_names[0] + " - " + collected_names[1])

will output:

$ ./test_script
------------------------PERS-PERS-------------------------------
 John  -  Alex 
 Nick  -  Anna 

but I'm not sure it's exactly the way you want it.