AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'text' parsing XML files

Question

I am using a program to parse xml files from OpenVAS (someone else's code) and I am getting AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'text'. This is kind of expected because the "hostname" field can be empty for some of the scans. Ideally it should just put N/A as the hostname if it is blank.

Error:

File "/var/lib/openvasreporting/openvasreporting/libs/parser.py", line 115, in openvas_parser
vuln_host_name = vuln.find("./host/hostname").text
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'text'

Here are the corresponding lines in the parser.py file:

# --------------------
#
# VULN_HOST
vuln_host = vuln.find("./host").text
vuln_host_name = vuln.find("./host/hostname").text
if vuln_host_name is None:
    vuln_host_name = "N/A"
logging.debug("* hostname:\t{}".format(vuln_host_name))  # DEBUG
vuln_port = vuln.find("./port").text
logging.debug(
    "* vuln_host:\t{} port:\t{}".format(vuln_host, vuln_port))  # DEBUG

# --------------------

As a side note, this was a bug in 2 other sections of the parser.py file. This is what the resolved sections look like:

# --------------------
#
# VULN_CVES
#vuln_cves = nvt_tmp.findall("./refs/ref")
vuln_cves = []
ref_list = []
for reference in nvt_tmp.findall('./refs/ref'):
    if reference.attrib.get('type') == 'cve':
        vuln_cves.append(reference.attrib.get('id'))
    else:
        ref_list.append(reference.attrib.get('id'))
logging.debug("* vuln_cves:\t{}".format(vuln_cves))  # DEBUG
logging.debug("* vuln_cves:\t{}".format(Et.tostring(vuln_cves).decode()))  # DEBUG
if vuln_cves is None or vuln_cves.text.lower() == "nocve":
    vuln_cves = []
else:
    vuln_cves = [vuln_cves.text.lower()]
vuln_references = ' , '.join(ref_list)
logging.debug("* vuln_cves:\t{}".format(vuln_cves))  # DEBUG
logging.debug("* vuln_references:\t{}".format(vuln_references))
# --------------------
#
# VULN_REFERENCES
vuln_references = nvt_tmp.find("./xref")
if vuln_references is None or vuln_references.text.lower() == "noxref":
    vuln_references = []
else:
    vuln_references = vuln_references.text.lower().replace("url:", "\n")

logging.debug("* vuln_references:\t{}".format(vuln_references))  # DEBUG
#
# --------------------

I've tried adding it with an else: pass but I am getting the same result.

I'm not really a programmer so I apologize if this doesn't have all the relevant information.

Answer 1

This happens because you're calling find() and then immediately accessing the .text attribute, without checking if find() actually found anything.

Do it this way instead:

element = vuln.find("./host/hostname")
if element:
    vuln_host_name = element.text
else:
    vuln_host_name = "N/A"