In Python, how do I refer to an XML tag that contains a hyphen

Question

I'm trying to use BeautifulSoup to parse an XML file. One of the elements has a hyphen in it: distribution-code

How do I access it? I've tried:

soup.distribution-code
soup."distribution-code" (tried single quotes too)
soup.[distribution-code]

but none of these work.

Answer 1

You can access non-hyphenated elements by attribute reference using regular Python syntax, i.e. obj.name, however, - is not a valid character when using that syntax (Python treats it as the "minus" operator), hence you can not access such elements by that method.

Instead, use soup.find() or soup.find_all():

>>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup('<thing><id>1234</id><distribution-code>555444333</distribution-code></thing>')
>>> soup.thing
<thing><id>1234</id><distribution-code>555444333</distribution-code></thing>
>>> soup.id
<id>1234</id>
>>> soup.distribution-code
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'code' is not defined
>>> soup.find('distribution-code')
<distribution-code>555444333</distribution-code>

Or, as pointed out in chepner's comment, you can use getattr() and setattr() to get and set attributes that contain hyphens. I think that soup.find() is the more common method for accessing those elements.