Testing for Existence [Universal Feed Parser]

Testing for Existence

Feeds in the real world may be missing elements, even elements that are required by the specification. You should always test for the existence of an element before getting its value. Never assume an element is present.

Use standard Python dictionary functions such as has_key to test whether an element exists.

Example: Testing if elements are present

>>> import feedparser
>>> d = feedparser.parse('http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/atom.xml')
>>> d.feed.has_key('title')
True
>>> d.feed.has_key('ttl')
False
>>> d.feed.get('title', 'No title')
u'Sample feed'
>>> d.feed.get('ttl', 60)
60

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