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

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.

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"