In pykml, I can read the first placemark in a file using the following code:
with open(filename) as f:
pm = parser.parse(f).getroot().Document.Folder
Edit: An even easier solution, assuming all placemarks are in one folder:
from pykml import parser
with open(filename) as f:
folder = parser.parse(f).getroot().Document.Folder
for pm in folder.Placemark:
print(pm.name)
You can also use features of the underlying xml library lxml to search for placemark elements.
from pykml import parser
from pykml.factory import nsmap
namespace = {"ns": nsmap[None]}
with open(filename) as f:
root = parser.parse(f).getroot()
pms = root.findall(".//ns:Placemark", namespaces=namespace)
for pm in pms:
print(pm.name)
If you specifically search for placemarks that have a Linestring child, you can also use xpath for more sophisticated searches.
pms = root.xpath(".//ns:Placemark[.//ns:LineString]", namespaces=namespace)
This works:
with open(filename) as f:
doc = parser.parse(f).getroot().Document.Folder
for pm in doc.iterchildren():
if hasattr(pm, 'LineString'):
print pm.LineString.coordinates