How can I check the existence of attributes and tags in XML before parsing?
If a tag doesn't exist, .find()
indeed returns None
. Simply test for that value:
for event in root.findall('event'): party = event.find('party') if party is None: continue parties = party.text children = event.get('value')
You already use .get()
on event to test for the value
the attribute; it returns None
as well if the attribute does not exist.
Attributes are stored in the .attrib
dictionary, so you can use standard Python techniques to test for the attribute explicitly too:
if 'value' in event.attrib: # value attribute is present.