Python get ID from XML data

I am a total python newb and am trying to parse an XML document that is being returned from google as a result of a post request.

The document returned looks like the one outlined in this doc http://code.google.com/apis/documents/docs/3.0/developers_guide_protocol.html#Archives where it says 'The response contains information about the archive.'

The only part I am interested in is the Id attribute right near the beginning. There will only every be 1 entry, and 1 id attribute. How can I extract it to be use later? I've been fighting with this for a while and I feel like I've tried everything from m开发者_开发知识库inidom to elementtree. No matter what I do my search comes back blank, loops don't iterate, or methods are missing. Any assistance is much appreciated. Thank you.

I would highly recommend the Python package BeautifulSoup. It is awesome. Here is a simple example using their example data (assuming you've installed BeautifulSoup already):

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

data = """<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
xmlns:docs='http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007'
xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005'>
<id>
https://docs.google.com/feeds/archive/-228SJEnnmwemsiDLLxmGeGygWrvW1tMZHHg6ARCy3Uj3SMH1GHlJ2scb8BcHSDDDUosQAocwBQOAKHOq3-0gmKA</id>
<published>2010-11-18T18:34:06.981Z</published>
<updated>2010-11-18T18:34:07.763Z</updated>
<app:edited xmlns:app='http://www.w3.org/2007/app'>
2010-11-18T18:34:07.763Z</app:edited>
<category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind'
term='http://schemas.google.com/docs/2007#archive'
label='archive' />
<title>Document Archive - someuser@somedomain.com</title>
<link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml'
href='https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/archive/-228SJEnnmwemsiDLLxmGeGygWrvW1tMZHHg6ARCy3Uj3SMH1GHlJ2scb8BcHSDDDUosQAocwBQOAKHOq3-0gmKA' />
<link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml'
href='https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/archive/-228SJEnnmwemsiDLLxmGeGygWrvW1tMZHHg6ARCy3Uj3SMH1GHlJ2scb8BcHSDDDUosQAocwBQOAKHOq3-0gmKA' />
<author>
    <name>someuser</name>
    <email>someuser@somedomain.com</email>
</author>
<docs:archiveNotify>someuser@somedomain.com</docs:archiveNotify>
<docs:archiveStatus>flattening</docs:archiveStatus>
<docs:archiveResourceId>
0Adj-hQNOVsTFSNDEkdk2221OTJfMWpxOGI5OWZu</docs:archiveResourceId>
<docs:archiveResourceId>
0Adj-hQNOVsTFZGZodGs2O72NFMllMQDN3a2Rq</docs:archiveResourceId>
<docs:archiveConversion source='application/vnd.google-apps.document'
target='text/plain' />
</entry>"""

soup = BeautifulSoup(data, fromEncoding='utf8')
print soup('id')[0].text

There is also expat, which is built into Python, but it is worth learning BeautifulSoup, because it will respond way better to real-world XML (and HTML).

Assuming the variable response contains a string representation of the returned HTML document, let me tell you the WRONG way to solve your problem

id = response.split("</id>")[0].split("<id>")[1]

The right way to do it is with xml.sax or xml.dom or expat, but personally, I wouldn't be bothered unless I wanted to have robust error handling of exception cases when response contains something unexpected.

EDIT: I forgot about BeautifulSoup, it is indeed as awesome as Travis describes.

If you'd like to use minidom, you can do the following (replace gd.xml with your xml input):

from xml.dom import minidom

dom = minidom.parse("gd.xml")
id = dom.getElementsByTagName("id")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue
print id

Also, I assume you meant id element, and not id attribute.