Clojure XML Parsing

Suppose you have the following xml to parse in your file:

<high-node>
   <low-node>my text</low-node>
</high-node>

you load clojure.xml:

user=> (use 'clojure.xml)

when parsed, the xml will have the following structure:

{:tag :high-node, :attrs nil, :content [{:tag :low-node, :attrs nil, :content ["my text"]}]}

and then you can seq over the content of the file to get the content of the low-node:

user=> (for [x (xml-seq 
              (parse (java.io.File. file)))
                 :when (= :low-node (:tag x))]
         (first (:content x)))

("my text")

Similarly, if you wanted to have access to the entire list of information on low-node, you would change the :when predicate to (= (:high-node (:tag x))):

user=> (for [x (xml-seq 
              (parse (java.io.File. file)))
                 :when (= :high-node (:tag x))]
         (first (:content x)))

({:tag :low-node, :attrs nil, :content ["my text"]})

This works because the keywords can operate as functions. See Questions about lists and other stuff in Clojure and Data Structures: Keywords