Hi Kristian -

I'm sorry that I can't speak to the Python portion of your question, but maybe you can leverage some of the functx functions to get better information? I confess that I'm not sure how to determine typing for items beyond a certain point - hopefully someone more knowledgeable will weigh in.

```xquery xquery version "3.1";

import module namespace functx = "http://www.functx.com"; let $list := <list> <entry> <a>1</a> <b>2</b> </entry> <entry> <a>1</a> <b>2</b> <c>3</c> </entry> </list> let $items := for $entry in $list/entry[not(exists(./c))] return $entry return( <result> <type-of>{ functx:atomic-type($items/a) }</type-of> <sequence-type>{ functx:sequence-type($items/a) }</sequence-type> { $items } </result> ) ``` The above returns <result> <type-of>xs:untypedAtomic</type-of> <sequence-type>element()</sequence-type> <entry> <a>1</a> <b>2</b> </entry> </result>

I hope that's helpful (but recognize that it probably isn't). Cheers, Bridger

On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 8:01 AM Kristian Kankainen kristian@keeleleek.ee wrote:

Hello,

XQuery is a lovely language and together with BaseX it is very lovely.

But now, for a project that need Python, I find difficulties understanding the general workflow communicating between BaseX and Python.

My basic situation boils down to 1) execute a query on BaseX that returns a list of data 2) analyse every item in the in Python 3) push the analysis result back in to BaseX.

I have done updates like this solely in XQuery but this time I need the analysis part done in Python.

Since I seem to only get a list of strings out of a query executed by the client, is this usecase even possible?

Below is attached my sample running code

Best regards, Kristian K

from BaseXClient import BaseXClient

# open a session
session = BaseXClient.Session('localhost', 1984, 'admin', 'admin')

# execute a query that returns a list of entry elements
query = session.query("""
let $list :=
  <list>
    <entry>
      <a>1</a>
      <b>2</b>
    </entry>
    <entry>
      <a>1</a>
      <b>2</b>
      <c>3</c>
    </entry>
  </list>

let $items :=
    for $entry in $list/entry[not(exists(./c))]
      return $entry

return $items
"""
)

# process each item of the query
for typecode, item in query.iter():
  print(type(item))
  print(item)

session.close()

This returns simply: <class 'str'> # the type of returned item is of class 'str' <entry> # this is the content of the plain text object <a>1</a> <b>2</b>

</entry>