xml - Python ElementTree find() not matching within kml file -

i'm trying find element kml file using element trees follows:

from xml.etree.elementtree import elementtree  tree = elementtree() tree.parse("history-03-02-2012.kml") p = tree.find(".//name") 

a sufficient subset of file demonstrate problem follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">   <document>     <name>location history 03/03/2012 03/10/2012</name>   </document> </kml> 

a "name" element exists; why search come empty?

the name element you're trying match within kml namespace, aren't searching namespace in mind.

try:

p = tree.find(".//{http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2}name") 

if using lxml's xpath instead of standard-library elementtree, you'd instead pass namespace in dictionary:

>>> tree = lxml.etree.fromstring('''<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2"> ...   <document> ...     <name>location history 03/03/2012 03/10/2012</name> ...   </document> ... </kml>''') >>> tree.xpath('//kml:name', namespaces={'kml': "http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2"}) [<element {http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2}name @ 0x23afe60>]