Extract data from an XML string with xml.etree.ElementTree - python-3.x

Question

I have an XML string and I need to extract the first three "col" tag in each group of "row". In other words, the output should be the following:
['1043100330', 'Smith', 'John', '1043100331', 'Swartz', 'Francis', '1043100332', 'Laff', 'Michael']
This is the XML:
data = '''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soapenv:Body>
<processOXIMessageResponse xmlns="urn:com:singun:webservice" xmlns:ns="urn:com:singun:webservice">
<ns1:processOXIMessageReturn xmlns:ns1="urn:com:singun:webservice">
<SingunDocument xmlns="C" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" protocol="OXI">
<sessionId xmlns="">1613762599483</sessionId>
<command xmlns="" echo="" xsi:type="ServiceProviderGetListResponse">
<serviceProviderTable>
<colHeading>User Id</colHeading>
<colHeading>Last Name</colHeading>
<colHeading>First Name</colHeading>
<colHeading>Email Address</colHeading>
<colHeading>Phone Number</colHeading>
<colHeading>Extension</colHeading>
<colHeading>Country Code</colHeading>
<colHeading>National Prefix</colHeading>
<row>
<col>1043100330</col>
<col>Smith</col>
<col>John</col>
<col>jsmith#example.com</col>
<col>1043101330</col>
<col>1330</col>
<col>52</col>
<col>52</col>
</row>
<row>
<col>1043100331</col>
<col>Swartz</col>
<col>Francis</col>
<col>fswartz#example.com</col>
<col>1043101331</col>
<col>1331</col>
<col>52</col>
<col>52</col>
</row>
<row>
<row>
<col>1043100332</col>
<col>Laff</col>
<col>Michael</col>
<col>mlaff#example.com</col>
<col>1043101332</col>
<col>1332</col>
<col>52</col>
<col>52</col>
</row>
</serviceProviderTable>
</command>
</SingunDocument>
</ns1:processOXIMessageReturn>
</processOXIMessageResponse>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
The following is my code, but it extracts only the first "col" tag instead of the first three of each group as I would like:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
users = []
root = ET.fromstring(resp)
for col in root.iterfind('.//row/col[1]'):
users.append(col.text)
print(users)
This is the output of my code:
['1043100330', '1043100331', '1043100332']
Please if you can give me a hand. Thanks a lot

Answer 1

You need to take into account the namespaces, as well as the structure of your xml. Try something like:
data = root.findall('.//{C}serviceProviderTable//{C}row')
for datum in data:
entries = datum.findall('.//{C}col')
users.append([entry.text.strip() for entry in entries[:3]])
for user in users:
print(user)
Output:
['1043100330', 'Smith', 'John']
['1043100331', 'Swartz', 'Francis']
['1043100332', 'Laff', 'Michael']