xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API¶Source code: Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py
The xml.etree.ElementTree module implements a simple and efficient API
for parsing and creating XML data.
Changed in version 3.3: This module will use a fast implementation whenever available.
The xml.etree.cElementTree module is deprecated.
Warning
The xml.etree.ElementTree module is not secure against
maliciously constructed data. If you need to parse untrusted or
unauthenticated data see XML vulnerabilities.
This is a short tutorial for using xml.etree.ElementTree (ET in
short). The goal is to demonstrate some of the building blocks and basic
concepts of the module.
XML is an inherently hierarchical data format, and the most natural way to
represent it is with a tree. ET has two classes for this purpose -
ElementTree represents the whole XML document as a tree, and
Element represents a single node in this tree. Interactions with
the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are usually done
on the ElementTree level. Interactions with a single XML element
and its sub-elements are done on the Element level.
We’ll be using the following XML document as the sample data for this section:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank>1</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank>4</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank>68</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>
We can import this data by reading from a file:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('country_data.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
Or directly from a string:
root = ET.fromstring(country_data_as_string)
fromstring() parses XML from a string directly into an Element,
which is the root element of the parsed tree. Other parsing functions may
create an ElementTree. Check the documentation to be sure.
As an Element, root has a tag and a dictionary of attributes:
>>> root.tag
'data'
>>> root.attrib
{}
It also has children nodes over which we can iterate:
>>> for child in root:
... print(child.tag, child.attrib)
...
country {'name': 'Liechtenstein'}
country {'name': 'Singapore'}
country {'name': 'Panama'}
Children are nested, and we can access specific child nodes by index:
>>> root[0][1].text
'2008'
Note
Not all elements of the XML input will end up as elements of the
parsed tree. Currently, this module skips over any XML comments,
processing instructions, and document type declarations in the
input. Nevertheless, trees built using this module’s API rather
than parsing from XML text can have comments and processing
instructions in them; they will be included when generating XML
output. A document type declaration may be accessed by passing a
custom TreeBuilder instance to the XMLParser
constructor.
Most parsing functions provided by this module require the whole document
to be read at once before returning any result. It is possible to use an
XMLParser and feed data into it incrementally, but it is a push API that
calls methods on a callback target, which is too low-level and inconvenient for
most needs. Sometimes what the user really wants is to be able to parse XML
incrementally, without blocking operations, while enjoying the convenience of
fully constructed Element objects.
The most powerful tool for doing this is XMLPullParser. It does not
require a blocking read to obtain the XML data, and is instead fed with data
incrementally with XMLPullParser.feed() calls. To get the parsed XML
elements, call XMLPullParser.read_events(). Here is an example:
>>> parser = ET.XMLPullParser(['start', 'end'])
>>> parser.feed('<mytag>sometext')
>>> list(parser.read_events())
[('start', <Element 'mytag' at 0x7fa66db2be58>)]
>>> parser.feed(' more text</mytag>')
>>> for event, elem in parser.read_events():
... print(event)
... print(elem.tag, 'text=', elem.text)
...
end
The obvious use case is applications that operate in a non-blocking fashion where the XML data is being received from a socket or read incrementally from some storage device. In such cases, blocking reads are unacceptable.
Because it’s so flexible, XMLPullParser can be inconvenient to use for
simpler use-cases. If you don’t mind your application blocking on reading XML
data but would still like to have incremental parsing capabilities, take a look
at iterparse(). It can be useful when you’re reading a large XML document
and don’t want to hold it wholly in memory.
Element has some useful methods that help iterate recursively over all
the sub-tree below it (its children, their children, and so on). For example,
Element.iter():
>>> for neighbor in root.iter('neighbor'):
... print(neighbor.attrib)
...
{'name': 'Austria', 'direction': 'E'}
{'name': 'Switzerland', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Malaysia', 'direction': 'N'}
{'name': 'Costa Rica', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Colombia', 'direction': 'E'}
Element.findall() finds only elements with a tag which are direct
children of the current element. Element.find() finds the first child
with a particular tag, and Element.text accesses the element’s text
content. Element.get() accesses the element’s attributes:
>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = country.find('rank').text
... name = country.get('name')
... print(name, rank)
...
Liechtenstein 1
Singapore 4
Panama 68
More sophisticated specification of which elements to look for is possible by using XPath.
ElementTree provides a simple way to build XML documents and write them to files.
The ElementTree.write() method serves this purpose.
Once created, an Element object may be manipulated by directly changing
its fields (such as Element.text), adding and modifying attributes
(Element.set() method), as well as adding new children (for example
with Element.append()).
Let’s say we want to add one to each country’s rank, and add an updated
attribute to the rank element:
>>> for rank in root.iter('rank'):
... new_rank = int(rank.text) + 1
... rank.text = str(new_rank)
... rank.set('updated', 'yes')
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')
Our XML now looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank updated="yes">69</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>
We can remove elements using Element.remove(). Let’s say we want to
remove all countries with a rank higher than 50:
>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = int(country.find('rank').text)
... if rank > 50:
... root.remove(country)
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')
Our XML now looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
</data>
The SubElement() function also provides a convenient way to create new
sub-elements for a given element:
>>> a = ET.Element('a')
>>> b = ET.SubElement(a, 'b')
>>> c = ET.SubElement(a, 'c')
>>> d = ET.SubElement(c, 'd')
>>> ET.dump(a)
<a><b /><c><d /></c></a>
If the XML input has namespaces, tags and attributes
with prefixes in the form prefix:sometag get expanded to
{uri}sometag where the prefix is replaced by the full URI.
Also, if there is a default namespace,
that full URI gets prepended to all of the non-prefixed tags.
Here is an XML example that incorporates two namespaces, one with the prefix “fictional” and the other serving as the default namespace:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<actors xmlns:fictional="http://characters.example.com"
xmlns="http://people.example.com">
<actor>
<name>John Cleese</name>
<fictional:character>Lancelot</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Archie Leach</fictional:character>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Eric Idle</name>
<fictional:character>Sir Robin</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Gunther</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Commander Clement</fictional:character>
</actor>
</actors>
One way to search and explore this XML example is to manually add the
URI to every tag or attribute in the xpath of a
find() or findall():
root = fromstring(xml_text)
for actor in root.findall('{http://people.example.com}actor'):
name = actor.find('{http://people.example.com}name')
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('{http://characters.example.com}character'):
print(' |-->', char.text)
A better way to search the namespaced XML example is to create a dictionary with your own prefixes and use those in the search functions:
ns = {'real_person': 'http://people.example.com',
'role': 'http://characters.example.com'}
for actor in root.findall('real_person:actor', ns):
name = actor.find('real_person:name', ns)
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('role:character', ns):
print(' |-->', char.text)
These two approaches both output:
John Cleese
|--> Lancelot
|--> Archie Leach
Eric Idle
|--> Sir Robin
|--> Gunther
|--> Commander Clement
See http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm for tutorials and links to other docs.
This module provides limited support for XPath expressions for locating elements in a tree. The goal is to support a small subset of the abbreviated syntax; a full XPath engine is outside the scope of the module.
Here’s an example that demonstrates some of the XPath capabilities of the
module. We’ll be using the countrydata XML document from the
Parsing XML section:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
root = ET.fromstring(countrydata)
# Top-level elements
root.findall(".")
# All 'neighbor' grand-children of 'country' children of the top-level
# elements
root.findall("./country/neighbor")
# Nodes with name='Singapore' that have a 'year' child
root.findall(".//year/..[@name='Singapore']")
# 'year' nodes that are children of nodes with name='Singapore'
root.findall(".//*[@name='Singapore']/year")
# All 'neighbor' nodes that are the second child of their parent
root.findall(".//neighbor[2]")
| Syntax | Meaning |
|---|---|
tag |
Selects all child elements with the given tag.
For example, spam selects all child elements
named spam, and spam/egg selects all
grandchildren named egg in all children named
spam. |
* |
Selects all child elements. For example, */egg
selects all grandchildren named egg. |
. |
Selects the current node. This is mostly useful at the beginning of the path, to indicate that it’s a relative path. |
// |
Selects all subelements, on all levels beneath the
current element. For example, .//egg selects
all egg elements in the entire tree. |
.. |
Selects the parent element. Returns None if the
path attempts to reach the ancestors of the start
element (the element find was called on). |
[@attrib] |
Selects all elements that have the given attribute. |
[@attrib='value'] |
Selects all elements for which the given attribute has the given value. The value cannot contain quotes. |
[tag] |
Selects all elements that have a child named
tag. Only immediate children are supported. |
[tag='text'] |
Selects all elements that have a child named
tag whose complete text content, including
descendants, equals the given text. |
[position] |
Selects all elements that are located at the given
position. The position can be either an integer
(1 is the first position), the expression last()
(for the last position), or a position relative to
the last position (e.g. last()-1). |
Predicates (expressions within square brackets) must be preceded by a tag
name, an asterisk, or another predicate. position predicates must be
preceded by a tag name.
xml.etree.ElementTree.Comment(text=None)¶Comment element factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML comment by the standard serializer. The comment string can be either a bytestring or a Unicode string. text is a string containing the comment string. Returns an element instance representing a comment.
Note that XMLParser skips over comments in the input
instead of creating comment objects for them. An ElementTree will
only contain comment nodes if they have been inserted into to
the tree using one of the Element methods.
xml.etree.ElementTree.dump(elem)¶Writes an element tree or element structure to sys.stdout. This function should be used for debugging only.
The exact output format is implementation dependent. In this version, it’s written as an ordinary XML file.
elem is an element tree or an individual element.
xml.etree.ElementTree.fromstring(text)¶Parses an XML section from a string constant. Same as XML(). text
is a string containing XML data. Returns an Element instance.
xml.etree.ElementTree.fromstringlist(sequence, parser=None)¶Parses an XML document from a sequence of string fragments. sequence is a
list or other sequence containing XML data fragments. parser is an
optional parser instance. If not given, the standard XMLParser
parser is used. Returns an Element instance.
New in version 3.2.
xml.etree.ElementTree.iselement(element)¶Checks if an object appears to be a valid element object. element is an element instance. Returns a true value if this is an element object.
xml.etree.ElementTree.iterparse(source, events=None, parser=None)¶Parses an XML section into an element tree incrementally, and reports what’s
going on to the user. source is a filename or file object
containing XML data. events is a sequence of events to report back. The
supported events are the strings "start", "end", "start-ns" and
"end-ns" (the “ns” events are used to get detailed namespace
information). If events is omitted, only "end" events are reported.
parser is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
XMLParser parser is used. parser must be a subclass of
XMLParser and can only use the default TreeBuilder as a
target. Returns an iterator providing (event, elem) pairs.
Note that while iterparse() builds the tree incrementally, it issues
blocking reads on source (or the file it names). As such, it’s unsuitable
for applications where blocking reads can’t be made. For fully non-blocking
parsing, see XMLPullParser.
Note
iterparse() only guarantees that it has seen the “>” character of a
starting tag when it emits a “start” event, so the attributes are defined,
but the contents of the text and tail attributes are undefined at that
point. The same applies to the element children; they may or may not be
present.
If you need a fully populated element, look for “end” events instead.
Deprecated since version 3.4: The parser argument.
xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(source, parser=None)¶Parses an XML section into an element tree. source is a filename or file
object containing XML data. parser is an optional parser instance. If
not given, the standard XMLParser parser is used. Returns an
ElementTree instance.
xml.etree.ElementTree.ProcessingInstruction(target, text=None)¶PI element factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML processing instruction. target is a string containing the PI target. text is a string containing the PI contents, if given. Returns an element instance, representing a processing instruction.
Note that XMLParser skips over processing instructions
in the input instead of creating comment objects for them. An
ElementTree will only contain processing instruction nodes if
they have been inserted into to the tree using one of the
Element methods.
xml.etree.ElementTree.register_namespace(prefix, uri)¶Registers a namespace prefix. The registry is global, and any existing mapping for either the given prefix or the namespace URI will be removed. prefix is a namespace prefix. uri is a namespace uri. Tags and attributes in this namespace will be serialized with the given prefix, if at all possible.
New in version 3.2.
xml.etree.ElementTree.SubElement(parent, tag, attrib={}, **extra)¶Subelement factory. This function creates an element instance, and appends it to an existing element.
The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be either bytestrings or Unicode strings. parent is the parent element. tag is the subelement name. attrib is an optional dictionary, containing element attributes. extra contains additional attributes, given as keyword arguments. Returns an element instance.
xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)¶Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. element is an Element instance. encoding [1] is
the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use encoding="unicode" to
generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a bytestring is generated). method
is either "xml", "html" or "text" (default is "xml").
short_empty_elements has the same meaning as in ElementTree.write().
Returns an (optionally) encoded string containing the XML data.
New in version 3.4: The short_empty_elements parameter.
xml.etree.ElementTree.tostringlist(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)¶Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. element is an Element instance. encoding [1] is
the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use encoding="unicode" to
generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a bytestring is generated). method
is either "xml", "html" or "text" (default is "xml").
short_empty_elements has the same meaning as in ElementTree.write().
Returns a list of (optionally) encoded strings containing the XML data.
It does not guarantee any specific sequence, except that
b"".join(tostringlist(element)) == tostring(element).
New in version 3.2.
New in version 3.4: The short_empty_elements parameter.
xml.etree.ElementTree.XML(text, parser=None)¶Parses an XML section from a string constant. This function can be used to
embed “XML literals” in Python code. text is a string containing XML
data. parser is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
XMLParser parser is used. Returns an Element instance.
xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLID(text, parser=None)¶Parses an XML section from a string constant, and also returns a dictionary
which maps from element id:s to elements. text is a string containing XML
data. parser is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
XMLParser parser is used. Returns a tuple containing an
Element instance and a dictionary.
xml.etree.ElementTree.Element(tag, attrib={}, **extra)¶Element class. This class defines the Element interface, and provides a reference implementation of this interface.
The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be either bytestrings or Unicode strings. tag is the element name. attrib is an optional dictionary, containing element attributes. extra contains additional attributes, given as keyword arguments.
tag¶A string identifying what kind of data this element represents (the element type, in other words).
text¶tail¶These attributes can be used to hold additional data associated with
the element. Their values are usually strings but may be any
application-specific object. If the element is created from
an XML file, the text attribute holds either the text between
the element’s start tag and its first child or end tag, or None, and
the tail attribute holds either the text between the element’s
end tag and the next tag, or None. For the XML data
<a><b>1<c>2<d/>3</c></b>4</a>
the a element has None for both text and tail attributes,
the b element has text "1" and tail "4",
the c element has text "2" and tail None,
and the d element has text None and tail "3".
To collect the inner text of an element, see itertext(), for
example "".join(element.itertext()).
Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.
attrib¶A dictionary containing the element’s attributes. Note that while the attrib value is always a real mutable Python dictionary, an ElementTree implementation may choose to use another internal representation, and create the dictionary only if someone asks for it. To take advantage of such implementations, use the dictionary methods below whenever possible.
The following dictionary-like methods work on the element attributes.
clear()¶Resets an element. This function removes all subelements, clears all
attributes, and sets the text and tail attributes to None.
get(key, default=None)¶Gets the element attribute named key.
Returns the attribute value, or default if the attribute was not found.
items()¶Returns the element attributes as a sequence of (name, value) pairs. The attributes are returned in an arbitrary order.
keys()¶Returns the elements attribute names as a list. The names are returned in an arbitrary order.
set(key, value)¶Set the attribute key on the element to value.
The following methods work on the element’s children (subelements).
append(subelement)¶Adds the element subelement to the end of this element’s internal list
of subelements. Raises TypeError if subelement is not an
Element.
extend(subelements)¶Appends subelements from a sequence object with zero or more elements.
Raises TypeError if a subelement is not an Element.
New in version 3.2.
find(match, namespaces=None)¶Finds the first subelement matching match. match may be a tag name
or a path. Returns an element instance
or None. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix
to full name.
findall(match, namespaces=None)¶Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or path. Returns a list containing all matching elements in document order. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to full name.
findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)¶Finds text for the first subelement matching match. match may be a tag name or a path. Returns the text content of the first matching element, or default if no element was found. Note that if the matching element has no text content an empty string is returned. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to full name.
getchildren()¶Deprecated since version 3.2: Use list(elem) or iteration.
getiterator(tag=None)¶Deprecated since version 3.2: Use method Element.iter() instead.
insert(index, subelement)¶Inserts subelement at the given position in this element. Raises
TypeError if subelement is not an Element.
iter(tag=None)¶Creates a tree iterator with the current element as the root.
The iterator iterates over this element and all elements below it, in
document (depth first) order. If tag is not None or '*', only
elements whose tag equals tag are returned from the iterator. If the
tree structure is modified during iteration, the result is undefined.
New in version 3.2.
iterfind(match, namespaces=None)¶Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or path. Returns an iterable yielding all matching elements in document order. namespaces is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to full name.
New in version 3.2.
itertext()¶Creates a text iterator. The iterator loops over this element and all subelements, in document order, and returns all inner text.
New in version 3.2.
makeelement(tag, attrib)¶Creates a new element object of the same type as this element. Do not
call this method, use the SubElement() factory function instead.
remove(subelement)¶Removes subelement from the element. Unlike the find* methods this method compares elements based on the instance identity, not on tag value or contents.
Element objects also support the following sequence type methods
for working with subelements: __delitem__(),
__getitem__(), __setitem__(),
__len__().
Caution: Elements with no subelements will test as False. This behavior
will change in future versions. Use specific len(elem) or elem is
None test instead.
element = root.find('foo')
if not element: # careful!
print("element not found, or element has no subelements")
if element is None:
print("element not found")
xml.etree.ElementTree.ElementTree(element=None, file=None)¶ElementTree wrapper class. This class represents an entire element hierarchy, and adds some extra support for serialization to and from standard XML.
element is the root element. The tree is initialized with the contents of the XML file if given.
_setroot(element)¶Replaces the root element for this tree. This discards the current contents of the tree, and replaces it with the given element. Use with care. element is an element instance.
find(match, namespaces=None)¶Same as Element.find(), starting at the root of the tree.
findall(match, namespaces=None)¶Same as Element.findall(), starting at the root of the tree.
findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)¶Same as Element.findtext(), starting at the root of the tree.
getiterator(tag=None)¶Deprecated since version 3.2: Use method ElementTree.iter() instead.
getroot()¶Returns the root element for this tree.
iter(tag=None)¶Creates and returns a tree iterator for the root element. The iterator loops over all elements in this tree, in section order. tag is the tag to look for (default is to return all elements).
iterfind(match, namespaces=None)¶Same as Element.iterfind(), starting at the root of the tree.
New in version 3.2.
parse(source, parser=None)¶Loads an external XML section into this element tree. source is a file
name or file object. parser is an optional parser instance.
If not given, the standard XMLParser parser is used. Returns the
section root element.
write(file, encoding="us-ascii", xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)¶Writes the element tree to a file, as XML. file is a file name, or a
file object opened for writing. encoding [1] is the output
encoding (default is US-ASCII).
xml_declaration controls if an XML declaration should be added to the
file. Use False for never, True for always, None
for only if not US-ASCII or UTF-8 or Unicode (default is None).
default_namespace sets the default XML namespace (for “xmlns”).
method is either "xml", "html" or "text" (default is
"xml").
The keyword-only short_empty_elements parameter controls the formatting
of elements that contain no content. If True (the default), they are
emitted as a single self-closed tag, otherwise they are emitted as a pair
of start/end tags.
The output is either a string (str) or binary (bytes).
This is controlled by the encoding argument. If encoding is
"unicode", the output is a string; otherwise, it’s binary. Note that
this may conflict with the type of file if it’s an open
file object; make sure you do not try to write a string to a
binary stream and vice versa.
New in version 3.4: The short_empty_elements parameter.
This is the XML file that is going to be manipulated:
<html>
<head>
<title>Example page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Moved to <a href="http://example.org/">example.org</a>
or <a href="http://example.com/">example.com</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Example of changing the attribute “target” of every link in first paragraph:
>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree
>>> tree = ElementTree()
>>> tree.parse("index.xhtml")
<Element 'html' at 0xb77e6fac>
>>> p = tree.find("body/p") # Finds first occurrence of tag p in body
>>> p
<Element 'p' at 0xb77ec26c>
>>> links = list(p.iter("a")) # Returns list of all links
>>> links
[<Element 'a' at 0xb77ec2ac>, <Element 'a' at 0xb77ec1cc>]
>>> for i in links: # Iterates through all found links
... i.attrib["target"] = "blank"
>>> tree.write("output.xhtml")
xml.etree.ElementTree.QName(text_or_uri, tag=None)¶QName wrapper. This can be used to wrap a QName attribute value, in order
to get proper namespace handling on output. text_or_uri is a string
containing the QName value, in the form {uri}local, or, if the tag argument
is given, the URI part of a QName. If tag is given, the first argument is
interpreted as a URI, and this argument is interpreted as a local name.
QName instances are opaque.
xml.etree.ElementTree.TreeBuilder(element_factory=None)¶Generic element structure builder. This builder converts a sequence of start, data, and end method calls to a well-formed element structure. You can use this class to build an element structure using a custom XML parser, or a parser for some other XML-like format. element_factory, when given, must be a callable accepting two positional arguments: a tag and a dict of attributes. It is expected to return a new element instance.
close()¶Flushes the builder buffers, and returns the toplevel document
element. Returns an Element instance.
data(data)¶Adds text to the current element. data is a string. This should be either a bytestring, or a Unicode string.
end(tag)¶Closes the current element. tag is the element name. Returns the closed element.
start(tag, attrs)¶Opens a new element. tag is the element name. attrs is a dictionary containing element attributes. Returns the opened element.
In addition, a custom TreeBuilder object can provide the
following method:
doctype(name, pubid, system)¶Handles a doctype declaration. name is the doctype name. pubid is
the public identifier. system is the system identifier. This method
does not exist on the default TreeBuilder class.
New in version 3.2.
xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLParser(html=0, target=None, encoding=None)¶This class is the low-level building block of the module. It uses
xml.parsers.expat for efficient, event-based parsing of XML. It can
be fed XML data incrementally with the feed() method, and parsing
events are translated to a push API - by invoking callbacks on the target
object. If target is omitted, the standard TreeBuilder is used.
The html argument was historically used for backwards compatibility and is
now deprecated. If encoding [1] is given, the value overrides the
encoding specified in the XML file.
Deprecated since version 3.4: The html argument. The remaining arguments should be passed via keyword to prepare for the removal of the html argument.
close()¶Finishes feeding data to the parser. Returns the result of calling the
close() method of the target passed during construction; by default,
this is the toplevel document element.
doctype(name, pubid, system)¶Deprecated since version 3.2: Define the TreeBuilder.doctype() method on a custom TreeBuilder
target.
feed(data)¶Feeds data to the parser. data is encoded data.
XMLParser.feed() calls target‘s start(tag, attrs_dict) method
for each opening tag, its end(tag) method for each closing tag, and data
is processed by method data(data). XMLParser.close() calls
target‘s method close(). XMLParser can be used not only for
building a tree structure. This is an example of counting the maximum depth
of an XML file:
>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import XMLParser
>>> class MaxDepth: # The target object of the parser
... maxDepth = 0
... depth = 0
... def start(self, tag, attrib): # Called for each opening tag.
... self.depth += 1
... if self.depth > self.maxDepth:
... self.maxDepth = self.depth
... def end(self, tag): # Called for each closing tag.
... self.depth -= 1
... def data(self, data):
... pass # We do not need to do anything with data.
... def close(self): # Called when all data has been parsed.
... return self.maxDepth
...
>>> target = MaxDepth()
>>> parser = XMLParser(target=target)
>>> exampleXml = """
... <a>
... <b>
... </b>
... <b>
... <c>
... <d>
... </d>
... </c>
... </b>
... </a>"""
>>> parser.feed(exampleXml)
>>> parser.close()
4
xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLPullParser(events=None)¶A pull parser suitable for non-blocking applications. Its input-side API is
similar to that of XMLParser, but instead of pushing calls to a
callback target, XMLPullParser collects an internal list of parsing
events and lets the user read from it. events is a sequence of events to
report back. The supported events are the strings "start", "end",
"start-ns" and "end-ns" (the “ns” events are used to get detailed
namespace information). If events is omitted, only "end" events are
reported.
feed(data)¶Feed the given bytes data to the parser.
close()¶Signal the parser that the data stream is terminated. Unlike
XMLParser.close(), this method always returns None.
Any events not yet retrieved when the parser is closed can still be
read with read_events().
read_events()¶Return an iterator over the events which have been encountered in the
data fed to the
parser. The iterator yields (event, elem) pairs, where event is a
string representing the type of event (e.g. "end") and elem is the
encountered Element object.
Events provided in a previous call to read_events() will not be
yielded again. Events are consumed from the internal queue only when
they are retrieved from the iterator, so multiple readers iterating in
parallel over iterators obtained from read_events() will have
unpredictable results.
Note
XMLPullParser only guarantees that it has seen the “>”
character of a starting tag when it emits a “start” event, so the
attributes are defined, but the contents of the text and tail attributes
are undefined at that point. The same applies to the element children;
they may or may not be present.
If you need a fully populated element, look for “end” events instead.
New in version 3.4.
xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError¶XML parse error, raised by the various parsing methods in this module when parsing fails. The string representation of an instance of this exception will contain a user-friendly error message. In addition, it will have the following attributes available:
code¶A numeric error code from the expat parser. See the documentation of
xml.parsers.expat for the list of error codes and their meanings.
position¶A tuple of line, column numbers, specifying where the error occurred.
Footnotes
| [1] | The encoding string included in XML output should conform to the appropriate standards. For example, “UTF-8” is valid, but “UTF8” is not. See https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/#NT-EncodingDecl and https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml. |