72db76529b98653e8684b0ccc2a6475d35542934
[platform/upstream/python-lxml.git] / doc / html / tutorial.html
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31 <table class="docinfo" frame="void" rules="none">
32 <col class="docinfo-name" />
33 <col class="docinfo-content" />
34 <tbody valign="top">
35 <tr><th class="docinfo-name">Author:</th>
36 <td>Stefan Behnel</td></tr>
37 </tbody>
38 </table>
39 <p>This is a tutorial on XML processing with <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>.  It briefly
40 overviews the main concepts of the <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm#documentation">ElementTree API</a>, and some simple
41 enhancements that make your life as a programmer easier.</p>
42 <p>For a complete reference of the API, see the <a class="reference external" href="api/index.html">generated API
43 documentation</a>.</p>
44 <div class="contents topic" id="contents">
45 <p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
46 <ul class="simple">
47 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-element-class" id="id2">The Element class</a><ul>
48 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#elements-are-lists" id="id3">Elements are lists</a></li>
49 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#elements-carry-attributes-as-a-dict" id="id4">Elements carry attributes as a dict</a></li>
50 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#elements-contain-text" id="id5">Elements contain text</a></li>
51 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#using-xpath-to-find-text" id="id6">Using XPath to find text</a></li>
52 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#tree-iteration" id="id7">Tree iteration</a></li>
53 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#serialisation" id="id8">Serialisation</a></li>
54 </ul>
55 </li>
56 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-elementtree-class" id="id9">The ElementTree class</a></li>
57 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#parsing-from-strings-and-files" id="id10">Parsing from strings and files</a><ul>
58 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-fromstring-function" id="id11">The fromstring() function</a></li>
59 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-xml-function" id="id12">The XML() function</a></li>
60 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-parse-function" id="id13">The parse() function</a></li>
61 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#parser-objects" id="id14">Parser objects</a></li>
62 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#incremental-parsing" id="id15">Incremental parsing</a></li>
63 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#event-driven-parsing" id="id16">Event-driven parsing</a></li>
64 </ul>
65 </li>
66 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#namespaces" id="id17">Namespaces</a></li>
67 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#the-e-factory" id="id18">The E-factory</a></li>
68 <li><a class="reference internal" href="#elementpath" id="id19">ElementPath</a></li>
69 </ul>
70 </div>
71 <p>A common way to import <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> is as follows:</p>
72 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">lxml</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">etree</span>
73 </pre></div>
74 <p>If your code only uses the ElementTree API and does not rely on any
75 functionality that is specific to <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>, you can also use (any part
76 of) the following import chain as a fall-back to the original ElementTree:</p>
77 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
78   <span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">lxml</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">etree</span>
79   <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"running with lxml.etree"</span><span class="p">)</span>
80 <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">ImportError</span><span class="p">:</span>
81   <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
82     <span class="c1"># Python 2.5</span>
83     <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">xml.etree.cElementTree</span> <span class="kn">as</span> <span class="nn">etree</span>
84     <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"running with cElementTree on Python 2.5+"</span><span class="p">)</span>
85   <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">ImportError</span><span class="p">:</span>
86     <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
87       <span class="c1"># Python 2.5</span>
88       <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">xml.etree.ElementTree</span> <span class="kn">as</span> <span class="nn">etree</span>
89       <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"running with ElementTree on Python 2.5+"</span><span class="p">)</span>
90     <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">ImportError</span><span class="p">:</span>
91       <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
92         <span class="c1"># normal cElementTree install</span>
93         <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">cElementTree</span> <span class="kn">as</span> <span class="nn">etree</span>
94         <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"running with cElementTree"</span><span class="p">)</span>
95       <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">ImportError</span><span class="p">:</span>
96         <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
97           <span class="c1"># normal ElementTree install</span>
98           <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">elementtree.ElementTree</span> <span class="kn">as</span> <span class="nn">etree</span>
99           <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"running with ElementTree"</span><span class="p">)</span>
100         <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">ImportError</span><span class="p">:</span>
101           <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Failed to import ElementTree from any known place"</span><span class="p">)</span>
102 </pre></div>
103 <p>To aid in writing portable code, this tutorial makes it clear in the examples
104 which part of the presented API is an extension of <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> over the
105 original <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm#documentation">ElementTree API</a>, as defined by Fredrik Lundh's <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm">ElementTree
106 library</a>.</p>
107 <div class="section" id="the-element-class">
108 <h1>The Element class</h1>
109 <p>An <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt> is the main container object for the ElementTree API.  Most of
110 the XML tree functionality is accessed through this class.  Elements are
111 easily created through the <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt> factory:</p>
112 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"root"</span><span class="p">)</span>
113 </pre></div>
114 <p>The XML tag name of elements is accessed through the <tt class="docutils literal">tag</tt> property:</p>
115 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
116 <span class="go">root</span>
117 </pre></div>
118 <p>Elements are organised in an XML tree structure.  To create child elements and
119 add them to a parent element, you can use the <tt class="docutils literal">append()</tt> method:</p>
120 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"child1"</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">)</span>
121 </pre></div>
122 <p>However, this is so common that there is a shorter and much more efficient way
123 to do this: the <tt class="docutils literal">SubElement</tt> factory.  It accepts the same arguments as the
124 <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt> factory, but additionally requires the parent as first argument:</p>
125 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child2</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"child2"</span><span class="p">)</span>
126 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child3</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"child3"</span><span class="p">)</span>
127 </pre></div>
128 <p>To see that this is really XML, you can serialise the tree you have created:</p>
129 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
130 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;</span>
131 <span class="go">  &lt;child1/&gt;</span>
132 <span class="go">  &lt;child2/&gt;</span>
133 <span class="go">  &lt;child3/&gt;</span>
134 <span class="go">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
135 </pre></div>
136 <div class="section" id="elements-are-lists">
137 <h2>Elements are lists</h2>
138 <p>To make the access to these subelements easy and straight forward,
139 elements mimic the behaviour of normal Python lists as closely as
140 possible:</p>
141 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span>
142 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
143 <span class="go">child1</span>
144
145 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">))</span>
146 <span class="go">3</span>
147
148 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">index</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">])</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
149 <span class="go">1</span>
150
151 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">children</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nb">list</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
152
153 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">child</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">:</span>
154 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
155 <span class="go">child1</span>
156 <span class="go">child2</span>
157 <span class="go">child3</span>
158
159 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">insert</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"child0"</span><span class="p">))</span>
160 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">start</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[:</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span>
161 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">end</span>   <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">:]</span>
162
163 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">start</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
164 <span class="go">child0</span>
165 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">end</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
166 <span class="go">child3</span>
167 </pre></div>
168 <p>Prior to ElementTree 1.3 and lxml 2.0, you could also check the truth value of
169 an Element to see if it has children, i.e. if the list of children is empty:</p>
170 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">:</span>   <span class="c1"># this no longer works!</span>
171     <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"The root element has children"</span><span class="p">)</span>
172 </pre></div>
173 <p>This is no longer supported as people tend to expect that a "something"
174 evaluates to True and expect Elements to be "something", may they have
175 children or not.  So, many users find it surprising that any Element
176 would evaluate to False in an if-statement like the above.  Instead,
177 use <tt class="docutils literal">len(element)</tt>, which is both more explicit and less error prone.</p>
178 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iselement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">))</span>  <span class="c1"># test if it's some kind of Element</span>
179 <span class="go">True</span>
180 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">if</span> <span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">):</span>                 <span class="c1"># test if it has children</span>
181 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"The root element has children"</span><span class="p">)</span>
182 <span class="go">The root element has children</span>
183 </pre></div>
184 <p>There is another important case where the behaviour of Elements in lxml
185 (in 2.0 and later) deviates from that of lists and from that of the
186 original ElementTree (prior to version 1.3 or Python 2.7/3.2):</p>
187 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">child</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">:</span>
188 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
189 <span class="go">child0</span>
190 <span class="go">child1</span>
191 <span class="go">child2</span>
192 <span class="go">child3</span>
193 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span>  <span class="c1"># this moves the element in lxml.etree!</span>
194 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">child</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">:</span>
195 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
196 <span class="go">child3</span>
197 <span class="go">child1</span>
198 <span class="go">child2</span>
199 </pre></div>
200 <p>In this example, the last element is <em>moved</em> to a different position,
201 instead of being copied, i.e. it is automatically removed from its
202 previous position when it is put in a different place.  In lists,
203 objects can appear in multiple positions at the same time, and the
204 above assignment would just copy the item reference into the first
205 position, so that both contain the exact same item:</p>
206 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">l</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">3</span><span class="p">]</span>
207 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">l</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">l</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span>
208 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">l</span>
209 <span class="go">[3, 1, 2, 3]</span>
210 </pre></div>
211 <p>Note that in the original ElementTree, a single Element object can sit
212 in any number of places in any number of trees, which allows for the same
213 copy operation as with lists.  The obvious drawback is that modifications
214 to such an Element will apply to all places where it appears in a tree,
215 which may or may not be intended.</p>
216 <p>The upside of this difference is that an Element in <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> always
217 has exactly one parent, which can be queried through the <tt class="docutils literal">getparent()</tt>
218 method.  This is not supported in the original ElementTree.</p>
219 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="ow">is</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getparent</span><span class="p">()</span>  <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
220 <span class="go">True</span>
221 </pre></div>
222 <p>If you want to <em>copy</em> an element to a different position in <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>,
223 consider creating an independent <em>deep copy</em> using the <tt class="docutils literal">copy</tt> module
224 from Python's standard library:</p>
225 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">copy</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">deepcopy</span>
226
227 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">element</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"neu"</span><span class="p">)</span>
228 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span> <span class="n">deepcopy</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">])</span> <span class="p">)</span>
229
230 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
231 <span class="go">child1</span>
232 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">([</span> <span class="n">c</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">c</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span> <span class="p">])</span>
233 <span class="go">['child3', 'child1', 'child2']</span>
234 </pre></div>
235 <p>The siblings (or neighbours) of an element are accessed as next and previous
236 elements:</p>
237 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="ow">is</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getprevious</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
238 <span class="go">True</span>
239 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="ow">is</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getnext</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
240 <span class="go">True</span>
241 </pre></div>
242 </div>
243 <div class="section" id="elements-carry-attributes-as-a-dict">
244 <h2>Elements carry attributes as a dict</h2>
245 <p>XML elements support attributes.  You can create them directly in the Element
246 factory:</p>
247 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"root"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">interesting</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"totally"</span><span class="p">)</span>
248 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
249 <span class="go">b'&lt;root interesting="totally"/&gt;'</span>
250 </pre></div>
251 <p>Attributes are just unordered name-value pairs, so a very convenient way
252 of dealing with them is through the dictionary-like interface of Elements:</p>
253 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"interesting"</span><span class="p">))</span>
254 <span class="go">totally</span>
255
256 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">))</span>
257 <span class="go">None</span>
258 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">set</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"Huhu"</span><span class="p">)</span>
259 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">))</span>
260 <span class="go">Huhu</span>
261
262 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
263 <span class="go">b'&lt;root interesting="totally" hello="Huhu"/&gt;'</span>
264
265 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="nb">sorted</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">keys</span><span class="p">())</span>
266 <span class="go">['hello', 'interesting']</span>
267
268 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">sorted</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">items</span><span class="p">()):</span>
269 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> = </span><span class="si">%r</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">name</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span><span class="p">))</span>
270 <span class="go">hello = 'Huhu'</span>
271 <span class="go">interesting = 'totally'</span>
272 </pre></div>
273 <p>For the cases where you want to do item lookup or have other reasons for
274 getting a 'real' dictionary-like object, e.g. for passing it around,
275 you can use the <tt class="docutils literal">attrib</tt> property:</p>
276 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">attributes</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">attrib</span>
277
278 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">attributes</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"interesting"</span><span class="p">])</span>
279 <span class="go">totally</span>
280 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">attributes</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"no-such-attribute"</span><span class="p">))</span>
281 <span class="go">None</span>
282
283 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">attributes</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Guten Tag"</span>
284 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">attributes</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">])</span>
285 <span class="go">Guten Tag</span>
286 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"hello"</span><span class="p">))</span>
287 <span class="go">Guten Tag</span>
288 </pre></div>
289 <p>Note that <tt class="docutils literal">attrib</tt> is a dict-like object backed by the Element itself.
290 This means that any changes to the Element are reflected in <tt class="docutils literal">attrib</tt>
291 and vice versa.  It also means that the XML tree stays alive in memory
292 as long as the <tt class="docutils literal">attrib</tt> of one of its Elements is in use.  To get an
293 independent snapshot of the attributes that does not depend on the XML
294 tree, copy it into a dict:</p>
295 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">d</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nb">dict</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">attrib</span><span class="p">)</span>
296 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="nb">sorted</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">d</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">items</span><span class="p">())</span>
297 <span class="go">[('hello', 'Guten Tag'), ('interesting', 'totally')]</span>
298 </pre></div>
299 </div>
300 <div class="section" id="elements-contain-text">
301 <h2>Elements contain text</h2>
302 <p>Elements can contain text:</p>
303 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"root"</span><span class="p">)</span>
304 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"TEXT"</span>
305
306 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
307 <span class="go">TEXT</span>
308
309 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
310 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;TEXT&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
311 </pre></div>
312 <p>In many XML documents (<em>data-centric</em> documents), this is the only place where
313 text can be found.  It is encapsulated by a leaf tag at the very bottom of the
314 tree hierarchy.</p>
315 <p>However, if XML is used for tagged text documents such as (X)HTML, text can
316 also appear between different elements, right in the middle of the tree:</p>
317 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="p">&lt;</span><span class="nt">html</span><span class="p">&gt;&lt;</span><span class="nt">body</span><span class="p">&gt;</span>Hello<span class="p">&lt;</span><span class="nt">br</span><span class="p">/&gt;</span>World<span class="p">&lt;/</span><span class="nt">body</span><span class="p">&gt;&lt;/</span><span class="nt">html</span><span class="p">&gt;</span>
318 </pre></div>
319 <p>Here, the <tt class="docutils literal">&lt;br/&gt;</tt> tag is surrounded by text.  This is often referred to as
320 <em>document-style</em> or <em>mixed-content</em> XML.  Elements support this through their
321 <tt class="docutils literal">tail</tt> property.  It contains the text that directly follows the element, up
322 to the next element in the XML tree:</p>
323 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">html</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"html"</span><span class="p">)</span>
324 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"body"</span><span class="p">)</span>
325 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"TEXT"</span>
326
327 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">)</span>
328 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;body&gt;TEXT&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
329
330 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">br</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">body</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"br"</span><span class="p">)</span>
331 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">)</span>
332 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;body&gt;TEXT&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
333
334 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">br</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tail</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"TAIL"</span>
335 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">)</span>
336 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;body&gt;TEXT&lt;br/&gt;TAIL&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
337 </pre></div>
338 <p>The two properties <tt class="docutils literal">.text</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">.tail</tt> are enough to represent any
339 text content in an XML document.  This way, the ElementTree API does
340 not require any <a class="reference external" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-1312295772">special text nodes</a> in addition to the Element
341 class, that tend to get in the way fairly often (as you might know
342 from classic <a class="reference external" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html">DOM</a> APIs).</p>
343 <p>However, there are cases where the tail text also gets in the way.
344 For example, when you serialise an Element from within the tree, you
345 do not always want its tail text in the result (although you would
346 still want the tail text of its children).  For this purpose, the
347 <tt class="docutils literal">tostring()</tt> function accepts the keyword argument <tt class="docutils literal">with_tail</tt>:</p>
348 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">br</span><span class="p">)</span>
349 <span class="go">b'&lt;br/&gt;TAIL'</span>
350 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">br</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">with_tail</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">False</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
351 <span class="go">b'&lt;br/&gt;'</span>
352 </pre></div>
353 <p>If you want to read <em>only</em> the text, i.e. without any intermediate
354 tags, you have to recursively concatenate all <tt class="docutils literal">text</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">tail</tt>
355 attributes in the correct order.  Again, the <tt class="docutils literal">tostring()</tt> function
356 comes to the rescue, this time using the <tt class="docutils literal">method</tt> keyword:</p>
357 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"text"</span><span class="p">)</span>
358 <span class="go">b'TEXTTAIL'</span>
359 </pre></div>
360 </div>
361 <div class="section" id="using-xpath-to-find-text">
362 <h2>Using XPath to find text</h2>
363 <p>Another way to extract the text content of a tree is <a class="reference external" href="xpathxslt.html#xpath">XPath</a>, which
364 also allows you to extract the separate text chunks into a list:</p>
365 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">xpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"string()"</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
366 <span class="go">TEXTTAIL</span>
367 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">xpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"//text()"</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
368 <span class="go">['TEXT', 'TAIL']</span>
369 </pre></div>
370 <p>If you want to use this more often, you can wrap it in a function:</p>
371 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">build_text_list</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XPath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"//text()"</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
372 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">build_text_list</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">))</span>
373 <span class="go">['TEXT', 'TAIL']</span>
374 </pre></div>
375 <p>Note that a string result returned by XPath is a special 'smart'
376 object that knows about its origins.  You can ask it where it came
377 from through its <tt class="docutils literal">getparent()</tt> method, just as you would with
378 Elements:</p>
379 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">texts</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">build_text_list</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">)</span>
380 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">])</span>
381 <span class="go">TEXT</span>
382 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parent</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getparent</span><span class="p">()</span>
383 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">parent</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
384 <span class="go">body</span>
385
386 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">])</span>
387 <span class="go">TAIL</span>
388 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getparent</span><span class="p">()</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
389 <span class="go">br</span>
390 </pre></div>
391 <p>You can also find out if it's normal text content or tail text:</p>
392 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">is_text</span><span class="p">)</span>
393 <span class="go">True</span>
394 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">is_text</span><span class="p">)</span>
395 <span class="go">False</span>
396 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">texts</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">is_tail</span><span class="p">)</span>
397 <span class="go">True</span>
398 </pre></div>
399 <p>While this works for the results of the <tt class="docutils literal">text()</tt> function, lxml will
400 not tell you the origin of a string value that was constructed by the
401 XPath functions <tt class="docutils literal">string()</tt> or <tt class="docutils literal">concat()</tt>:</p>
402 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">stringify</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XPath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"string()"</span><span class="p">)</span>
403 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">stringify</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">))</span>
404 <span class="go">TEXTTAIL</span>
405 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">stringify</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getparent</span><span class="p">())</span>
406 <span class="go">None</span>
407 </pre></div>
408 </div>
409 <div class="section" id="tree-iteration">
410 <h2>Tree iteration</h2>
411 <p>For problems like the above, where you want to recursively traverse the tree
412 and do something with its elements, tree iteration is a very convenient
413 solution.  Elements provide a tree iterator for this purpose.  It yields
414 elements in <em>document order</em>, i.e. in the order their tags would appear if you
415 serialised the tree to XML:</p>
416 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"root"</span><span class="p">)</span>
417 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"child"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Child 1"</span>
418 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"child"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Child 2"</span>
419 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"another"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Child 3"</span>
420
421 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
422 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;</span>
423 <span class="go">  &lt;child&gt;Child 1&lt;/child&gt;</span>
424 <span class="go">  &lt;child&gt;Child 2&lt;/child&gt;</span>
425 <span class="go">  &lt;another&gt;Child 3&lt;/another&gt;</span>
426 <span class="go">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
427
428 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">():</span>
429 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
430 <span class="go">root - None</span>
431 <span class="go">child - Child 1</span>
432 <span class="go">child - Child 2</span>
433 <span class="go">another - Child 3</span>
434 </pre></div>
435 <p>If you know you are only interested in a single tag, you can pass its name to
436 <tt class="docutils literal">iter()</tt> to have it filter for you.  Starting with lxml 3.0, you can also
437 pass more than one tag to intercept on multiple tags during iteration.</p>
438 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"child"</span><span class="p">):</span>
439 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
440 <span class="go">child - Child 1</span>
441 <span class="go">child - Child 2</span>
442
443 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"another"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"child"</span><span class="p">):</span>
444 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
445 <span class="go">child - Child 1</span>
446 <span class="go">child - Child 2</span>
447 <span class="go">another - Child 3</span>
448 </pre></div>
449 <p>By default, iteration yields all nodes in the tree, including
450 ProcessingInstructions, Comments and Entity instances.  If you want to
451 make sure only Element objects are returned, you can pass the
452 <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt> factory as tag parameter:</p>
453 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Entity</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"#234"</span><span class="p">))</span>
454 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Comment</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"some comment"</span><span class="p">))</span>
455
456 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">():</span>
457 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">if</span> <span class="nb">isinstance</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="nb">basestring</span><span class="p">):</span>  <span class="c1"># or 'str' in Python 3</span>
458 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
459 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">else</span><span class="p">:</span>
460 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"SPECIAL: </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
461 <span class="go">root - None</span>
462 <span class="go">child - Child 1</span>
463 <span class="go">child - Child 2</span>
464 <span class="go">another - Child 3</span>
465 <span class="go">SPECIAL: &amp;#234; - &amp;#234;</span>
466 <span class="go">SPECIAL: &lt;!--some comment--&gt; - some comment</span>
467
468 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">):</span>
469 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2"> - </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
470 <span class="go">root - None</span>
471 <span class="go">child - Child 1</span>
472 <span class="go">child - Child 2</span>
473 <span class="go">another - Child 3</span>
474
475 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Entity</span><span class="p">):</span>
476 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
477 <span class="go">&amp;#234;</span>
478 </pre></div>
479 <p>Note that passing a wildcard <tt class="docutils literal">"*"</tt> tag name will also yield all
480 <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt> nodes (and only elements).</p>
481 <p>In <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>, elements provide <a class="reference external" href="api.html#iteration">further iterators</a> for all directions in the
482 tree: children, parents (or rather ancestors) and siblings.</p>
483 </div>
484 <div class="section" id="serialisation">
485 <h2>Serialisation</h2>
486 <p>Serialisation commonly uses the <tt class="docutils literal">tostring()</tt> function that returns a
487 string, or the <tt class="docutils literal">ElementTree.write()</tt> method that writes to a file, a
488 file-like object, or a URL (via FTP PUT or HTTP POST).  Both calls accept
489 the same keyword arguments like <tt class="docutils literal">pretty_print</tt> for formatted output
490 or <tt class="docutils literal">encoding</tt> to select a specific output encoding other than plain
491 ASCII:</p>
492 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span><span class="p">)</span>
493
494 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
495 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
496
497 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">xml_declaration</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
498 <span class="go">&lt;?xml version='1.0' encoding='ASCII'?&gt;</span>
499 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;</span>
500
501 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">encoding</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'iso-8859-1'</span><span class="p">))</span>
502 <span class="go">&lt;?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?&gt;</span>
503 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;</span>
504
505 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
506 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;</span>
507 <span class="go">  &lt;a&gt;</span>
508 <span class="go">    &lt;b/&gt;</span>
509 <span class="go">  &lt;/a&gt;</span>
510 <span class="go">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
511 </pre></div>
512 <p>Note that pretty printing appends a newline at the end.</p>
513 <p>In lxml 2.0 and later (as well as ElementTree 1.3), the serialisation
514 functions can do more than XML serialisation.  You can serialise to
515 HTML or extract the text content by passing the <tt class="docutils literal">method</tt> keyword:</p>
516 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span>
517 <span class="gp">... </span>   <span class="s1">'&lt;html&gt;&lt;head/&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hello&lt;br/&gt;World&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span><span class="p">)</span>
518
519 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># default: method = 'xml'</span>
520 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;head/&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hello&lt;br/&gt;World&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
521
522 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'xml'</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># same as above</span>
523 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;head/&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hello&lt;br/&gt;World&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
524
525 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'html'</span><span class="p">)</span>
526 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;head&gt;&lt;/head&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hello&lt;br&gt;World&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
527
528 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'html'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
529 <span class="go">&lt;html&gt;</span>
530 <span class="go">&lt;head&gt;&lt;/head&gt;</span>
531 <span class="go">&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hello&lt;br&gt;World&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;</span>
532 <span class="go">&lt;/html&gt;</span>
533
534 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'text'</span><span class="p">)</span>
535 <span class="go">b'HelloWorld'</span>
536 </pre></div>
537 <p>As for XML serialisation, the default encoding for plain text
538 serialisation is ASCII:</p>
539 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">br</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nb">next</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'br'</span><span class="p">))</span>  <span class="c1"># get first result of iteration</span>
540 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">br</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tail</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sa">u</span><span class="s1">'W</span><span class="se">\xf6</span><span class="s1">rld'</span>
541
542 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'text'</span><span class="p">)</span>  <span class="c1"># doctest: +ELLIPSIS</span>
543 <span class="gt">Traceback (most recent call last):</span>
544   <span class="c">...</span>
545 <span class="gr">UnicodeEncodeError</span>: <span class="n">'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xf6' ...</span>
546
547 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'text'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">encoding</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"UTF-8"</span><span class="p">)</span>
548 <span class="go">b'HelloW\xc3\xb6rld'</span>
549 </pre></div>
550 <p>Here, serialising to a Python unicode string instead of a byte string
551 might become handy.  Just pass the name <tt class="docutils literal">'unicode'</tt> as encoding:</p>
552 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">encoding</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'unicode'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">method</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'text'</span><span class="p">)</span>
553 <span class="go">u'HelloW\xf6rld'</span>
554 </pre></div>
555 <p>The W3C has a good <a class="reference external" href="http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/">article about the Unicode character set and
556 character encodings</a>.</p>
557 </div>
558 </div>
559 <div class="section" id="the-elementtree-class">
560 <h1>The ElementTree class</h1>
561 <p>An <tt class="docutils literal">ElementTree</tt> is mainly a document wrapper around a tree with a
562 root node.  It provides a couple of methods for serialisation and
563 general document handling.</p>
564 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'''</span><span class="se">\</span>
565 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;</span>
566 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test" [ &lt;!ENTITY tasty "parsnips"&gt; ]&gt;</span>
567 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;root&gt;</span>
568 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">  &lt;a&gt;&amp;tasty;&lt;/a&gt;</span>
569 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
570 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">'''</span><span class="p">)</span>
571
572 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ElementTree</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
573 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">docinfo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">xml_version</span><span class="p">)</span>
574 <span class="go">1.0</span>
575 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">docinfo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">doctype</span><span class="p">)</span>
576 <span class="go">&lt;!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test"&gt;</span>
577
578 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">docinfo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">public_id</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">'-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN'</span>
579 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">docinfo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">system_url</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">'file://local.dtd'</span>
580 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">docinfo</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">doctype</span><span class="p">)</span>
581 <span class="go">&lt;!DOCTYPE root PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "file://local.dtd"&gt;</span>
582 </pre></div>
583 <p>An <tt class="docutils literal">ElementTree</tt> is also what you get back when you call the
584 <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt> function to parse files or file-like objects (see the
585 parsing section below).</p>
586 <p>One of the important differences is that the <tt class="docutils literal">ElementTree</tt> class
587 serialises as a complete document, as opposed to a single <tt class="docutils literal">Element</tt>.
588 This includes top-level processing instructions and comments, as well
589 as a DOCTYPE and other DTD content in the document:</p>
590 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="p">))</span>  <span class="c1"># lxml 1.3.4 and later</span>
591 <span class="go">&lt;!DOCTYPE root PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "file://local.dtd" [</span>
592 <span class="go">&lt;!ENTITY tasty "parsnips"&gt;</span>
593 <span class="go">]&gt;</span>
594 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;</span>
595 <span class="go">  &lt;a&gt;parsnips&lt;/a&gt;</span>
596 <span class="go">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
597 </pre></div>
598 <p>In the original xml.etree.ElementTree implementation and in lxml
599 up to 1.3.3, the output looks the same as when serialising only
600 the root Element:</p>
601 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getroot</span><span class="p">()))</span>
602 <span class="go">&lt;root&gt;</span>
603 <span class="go">  &lt;a&gt;parsnips&lt;/a&gt;</span>
604 <span class="go">&lt;/root&gt;</span>
605 </pre></div>
606 <p>This serialisation behaviour has changed in lxml 1.3.4.  Before,
607 the tree was serialised without DTD content, which made lxml
608 lose DTD information in an input-output cycle.</p>
609 </div>
610 <div class="section" id="parsing-from-strings-and-files">
611 <h1>Parsing from strings and files</h1>
612 <p><tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> supports parsing XML in a number of ways and from all
613 important sources, namely strings, files, URLs (http/ftp) and
614 file-like objects.  The main parse functions are <tt class="docutils literal">fromstring()</tt> and
615 <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt>, both called with the source as first argument.  By
616 default, they use the standard parser, but you can always pass a
617 different parser as second argument.</p>
618 <div class="section" id="the-fromstring-function">
619 <h2>The fromstring() function</h2>
620 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">fromstring()</tt> function is the easiest way to parse a string:</p>
621 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">some_xml_data</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;"</span>
622
623 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromstring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">some_xml_data</span><span class="p">)</span>
624 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
625 <span class="go">root</span>
626 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
627 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
628 </pre></div>
629 </div>
630 <div class="section" id="the-xml-function">
631 <h2>The XML() function</h2>
632 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">XML()</tt> function behaves like the <tt class="docutils literal">fromstring()</tt> function, but is
633 commonly used to write XML literals right into the source:</p>
634 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
635 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
636 <span class="go">root</span>
637 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
638 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
639 </pre></div>
640 <p>There is also a corresponding function <tt class="docutils literal">HTML()</tt> for HTML literals.</p>
641 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">HTML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;p&gt;data&lt;/p&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
642 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
643 <span class="go">b'&lt;html&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;p&gt;data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'</span>
644 </pre></div>
645 </div>
646 <div class="section" id="the-parse-function">
647 <h2>The parse() function</h2>
648 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt> function is used to parse from files and file-like objects.</p>
649 <p>As an example of such a file-like object, the following code uses the
650 <tt class="docutils literal">BytesIO</tt> class for reading from a string instead of an external file.
651 That class comes from the <tt class="docutils literal">io</tt> module in Python 2.6 and later.  In older
652 Python versions, you will have to use the <tt class="docutils literal">StringIO</tt> class from the
653 <tt class="docutils literal">StringIO</tt> module.  However, in real life, you would obviously avoid
654 doing this all together and use the string parsing functions above.</p>
655 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">io</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span>
656 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">some_file_or_file_like_object</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
657
658 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">parse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">some_file_or_file_like_object</span><span class="p">)</span>
659
660 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="p">)</span>
661 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
662 </pre></div>
663 <p>Note that <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt> returns an ElementTree object, not an Element object as
664 the string parser functions:</p>
665 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getroot</span><span class="p">()</span>
666 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
667 <span class="go">root</span>
668 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
669 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;data&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
670 </pre></div>
671 <p>The reasoning behind this difference is that <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt> returns a
672 complete document from a file, while the string parsing functions are
673 commonly used to parse XML fragments.</p>
674 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">parse()</tt> function supports any of the following sources:</p>
675 <ul class="simple">
676 <li>an open file object (make sure to open it in binary mode)</li>
677 <li>a file-like object that has a <tt class="docutils literal">.read(byte_count)</tt> method returning
678 a byte string on each call</li>
679 <li>a filename string</li>
680 <li>an HTTP or FTP URL string</li>
681 </ul>
682 <p>Note that passing a filename or URL is usually faster than passing an
683 open file or file-like object.  However, the HTTP/FTP client in libxml2
684 is rather simple, so things like HTTP authentication require a dedicated
685 URL request library, e.g. <tt class="docutils literal">urllib2</tt> or <tt class="docutils literal">requests</tt>.  These libraries
686 usually provide a file-like object for the result that you can parse
687 from while the response is streaming in.</p>
688 </div>
689 <div class="section" id="parser-objects">
690 <h2>Parser objects</h2>
691 <p>By default, <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> uses a standard parser with a default setup.  If
692 you want to configure the parser, you can create a new instance:</p>
693 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XMLParser</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">remove_blank_text</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># lxml.etree only!</span>
694 </pre></div>
695 <p>This creates a parser that removes empty text between tags while parsing,
696 which can reduce the size of the tree and avoid dangling tail text if you know
697 that whitespace-only content is not meaningful for your data.  An example:</p>
698 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;  &lt;a/&gt;   &lt;b&gt;  &lt;/b&gt;     &lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="p">)</span>
699
700 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
701 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a/&gt;&lt;b&gt;  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
702 </pre></div>
703 <p>Note that the whitespace content inside the <tt class="docutils literal">&lt;b&gt;</tt> tag was not removed, as
704 content at leaf elements tends to be data content (even if blank).  You can
705 easily remove it in an additional step by traversing the tree:</p>
706 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"*"</span><span class="p">):</span>
707 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="ow">is</span> <span class="ow">not</span> <span class="bp">None</span> <span class="ow">and</span> <span class="ow">not</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">strip</span><span class="p">():</span>
708 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">None</span>
709
710 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
711 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a/&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
712 </pre></div>
713 <p>See <tt class="docutils literal">help(etree.XMLParser)</tt> to find out about the available parser options.</p>
714 </div>
715 <div class="section" id="incremental-parsing">
716 <h2>Incremental parsing</h2>
717 <p><tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> provides two ways for incremental step-by-step parsing.  One is
718 through file-like objects, where it calls the <tt class="docutils literal">read()</tt> method repeatedly.
719 This is best used where the data arrives from a source like <tt class="docutils literal">urllib</tt> or any
720 other file-like object that can provide data on request.  Note that the parser
721 will block and wait until data becomes available in this case:</p>
722 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">DataSource</span><span class="p">:</span>
723 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">data</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&lt;roo"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"t&gt;&lt;"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"a/"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&gt;&lt;"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"/root&gt;"</span> <span class="p">]</span>
724 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">read</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">requested_size</span><span class="p">):</span>
725 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
726 <span class="gp">... </span>            <span class="k">return</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">data</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">pop</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">)</span>
727 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">IndexError</span><span class="p">:</span>
728 <span class="gp">... </span>            <span class="k">return</span> <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s1">''</span>
729
730 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">parse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">DataSource</span><span class="p">())</span>
731
732 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="p">)</span>
733 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a/&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
734 </pre></div>
735 <p>The second way is through a feed parser interface, given by the <tt class="docutils literal">feed(data)</tt>
736 and <tt class="docutils literal">close()</tt> methods:</p>
737 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XMLParser</span><span class="p">()</span>
738
739 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;roo"</span><span class="p">)</span>
740 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"t&gt;&lt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
741 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"a/"</span><span class="p">)</span>
742 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&gt;&lt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
743 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
744
745 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close</span><span class="p">()</span>
746
747 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
748 <span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;a/&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
749 </pre></div>
750 <p>Here, you can interrupt the parsing process at any time and continue it later
751 on with another call to the <tt class="docutils literal">feed()</tt> method.  This comes in handy if you
752 want to avoid blocking calls to the parser, e.g. in frameworks like Twisted,
753 or whenever data comes in slowly or in chunks and you want to do other things
754 while waiting for the next chunk.</p>
755 <p>After calling the <tt class="docutils literal">close()</tt> method (or when an exception was raised
756 by the parser), you can reuse the parser by calling its <tt class="docutils literal">feed()</tt>
757 method again:</p>
758 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">feed</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root/&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
759 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close</span><span class="p">()</span>
760 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
761 <span class="go">b'&lt;root/&gt;'</span>
762 </pre></div>
763 </div>
764 <div class="section" id="event-driven-parsing">
765 <h2>Event-driven parsing</h2>
766 <p>Sometimes, all you need from a document is a small fraction somewhere deep
767 inside the tree, so parsing the whole tree into memory, traversing it and
768 dropping it can be too much overhead.  <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> supports this use case
769 with two event-driven parser interfaces, one that generates parser events
770 while building the tree (<tt class="docutils literal">iterparse</tt>), and one that does not build the tree
771 at all, and instead calls feedback methods on a target object in a SAX-like
772 fashion.</p>
773 <p>Here is a simple <tt class="docutils literal">iterparse()</tt> example:</p>
774 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">some_file_like</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
775
776 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterparse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">some_file_like</span><span class="p">):</span>
777 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">, </span><span class="si">%4s</span><span class="s2">, </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">event</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
778 <span class="go">end,    a, data</span>
779 <span class="go">end, root, None</span>
780 </pre></div>
781 <p>By default, <tt class="docutils literal">iterparse()</tt> only generates events when it is done parsing an
782 element, but you can control this through the <tt class="docutils literal">events</tt> keyword argument:</p>
783 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">some_file_like</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
784
785 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterparse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">some_file_like</span><span class="p">,</span>
786 <span class="gp">... </span>                                      <span class="n">events</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"start"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"end"</span><span class="p">)):</span>
787 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">%5s</span><span class="s2">, </span><span class="si">%4s</span><span class="s2">, </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">event</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
788 <span class="go">start, root, None</span>
789 <span class="go">start,    a, data</span>
790 <span class="go">  end,    a, data</span>
791 <span class="go">  end, root, None</span>
792 </pre></div>
793 <p>Note that the text, tail, and children of an Element are not necessarily present
794 yet when receiving the <tt class="docutils literal">start</tt> event.  Only the <tt class="docutils literal">end</tt> event guarantees
795 that the Element has been parsed completely.</p>
796 <p>It also allows you to <tt class="docutils literal">.clear()</tt> or modify the content of an Element to
797 save memory. So if you parse a large tree and you want to keep memory
798 usage small, you should clean up parts of the tree that you no longer
799 need. The <tt class="docutils literal">keep_tail=True</tt> argument to <tt class="docutils literal">.clear()</tt> makes sure that
800 (tail) text content that follows the current element will not be touched.
801 It is highly discouraged to modify any content that the parser may not
802 have completely read through yet.</p>
803 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">some_file_like</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span><span class="p">(</span>
804 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="sa">b</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b&gt;data&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
805
806 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterparse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">some_file_like</span><span class="p">):</span>
807 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s1">'b'</span><span class="p">:</span>
808 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
809 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">elif</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s1">'a'</span><span class="p">:</span>
810 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"** cleaning up the subtree"</span><span class="p">)</span>
811 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">clear</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">keep_tail</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)</span>
812 <span class="go">data</span>
813 <span class="go">** cleaning up the subtree</span>
814 <span class="go">None</span>
815 <span class="go">** cleaning up the subtree</span>
816 </pre></div>
817 <p>A very important use case for <tt class="docutils literal">iterparse()</tt> is parsing large
818 generated XML files, e.g. database dumps.  Most often, these XML
819 formats only have one main data item element that hangs directly below
820 the root node and that is repeated thousands of times.  In this case,
821 it is best practice to let <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> do the tree building and only to
822 intercept on exactly this one Element, using the normal tree API
823 for data extraction.</p>
824 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">xml_file</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">BytesIO</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="sa">b</span><span class="s1">'''</span><span class="se">\</span>
825 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;root&gt;</span>
826 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">  &lt;a&gt;&lt;b&gt;ABC&lt;/b&gt;&lt;c&gt;abc&lt;/c&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</span>
827 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">  &lt;a&gt;&lt;b&gt;MORE DATA&lt;/b&gt;&lt;c&gt;more data&lt;/c&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</span>
828 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">  &lt;a&gt;&lt;b&gt;XYZ&lt;/b&gt;&lt;c&gt;xyz&lt;/c&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</span>
829 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="s1">&lt;/root&gt;'''</span><span class="p">)</span>
830
831 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">_</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">element</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterparse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xml_file</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'a'</span><span class="p">):</span>
832 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> -- </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">findtext</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'b'</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="n">element</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">))</span>
833 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">element</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">clear</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">keep_tail</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)</span>
834 <span class="go">ABC -- abc</span>
835 <span class="go">MORE DATA -- more data</span>
836 <span class="go">XYZ -- xyz</span>
837 </pre></div>
838 <p>If, for some reason, building the tree is not desired at all, the
839 target parser interface of <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> can be used.  It creates
840 SAX-like events by calling the methods of a target object.  By
841 implementing some or all of these methods, you can control which
842 events are generated:</p>
843 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">ParserTarget</span><span class="p">:</span>
844 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[]</span>
845 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">close_count</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">0</span>
846 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">start</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">attrib</span><span class="p">):</span>
847 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">events</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">((</span><span class="s2">"start"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">attrib</span><span class="p">))</span>
848 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">close</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">):</span>
849 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="n">events</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">events</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">[]</span>
850 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close_count</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="mi">1</span>
851 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">events</span>
852
853 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser_target</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">ParserTarget</span><span class="p">()</span>
854
855 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">parser</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XMLParser</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">target</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">parser_target</span><span class="p">)</span>
856 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromstring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'&lt;root test="true"/&gt;'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="p">)</span>
857
858 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">parser_target</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close_count</span><span class="p">)</span>
859 <span class="go">1</span>
860
861 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">event</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">events</span><span class="p">:</span>
862 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'event: </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> - tag: </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]))</span>
863 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">attr</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">items</span><span class="p">():</span>
864 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">' * </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> = </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">attr</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span><span class="p">))</span>
865 <span class="go">event: start - tag: root</span>
866 <span class="go"> * test = true</span>
867 </pre></div>
868 <p>You can reuse the parser and its target as often as you like, so you
869 should take care that the <tt class="docutils literal">.close()</tt> method really resets the
870 target to a usable state (also in the case of an error!).</p>
871 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromstring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'&lt;root test="true"/&gt;'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="p">)</span>
872 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">parser_target</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close_count</span><span class="p">)</span>
873 <span class="go">2</span>
874 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromstring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'&lt;root test="true"/&gt;'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="p">)</span>
875 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">parser_target</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close_count</span><span class="p">)</span>
876 <span class="go">3</span>
877 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">events</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">fromstring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'&lt;root test="true"/&gt;'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">parser</span><span class="p">)</span>
878 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">parser_target</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">close_count</span><span class="p">)</span>
879 <span class="go">4</span>
880
881 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">event</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">events</span><span class="p">:</span>
882 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'event: </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> - tag: </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]))</span>
883 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">attr</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">event</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">items</span><span class="p">():</span>
884 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">' * </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1"> = </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s1">'</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">attr</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">value</span><span class="p">))</span>
885 <span class="go">event: start - tag: root</span>
886 <span class="go"> * test = true</span>
887 </pre></div>
888 </div>
889 </div>
890 <div class="section" id="namespaces">
891 <h1>Namespaces</h1>
892 <p>The ElementTree API avoids
893 <a class="reference external" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-names/#ns-qualnames">namespace prefixes</a>
894 wherever possible and deploys the real namespace (the URI) instead:</p>
895 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">xhtml</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html"</span><span class="p">)</span>
896 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body"</span><span class="p">)</span>
897 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Hello World"</span>
898
899 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
900 <span class="go">&lt;html:html xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;</span>
901 <span class="go">  &lt;html:body&gt;Hello World&lt;/html:body&gt;</span>
902 <span class="go">&lt;/html:html&gt;</span>
903 </pre></div>
904 <p>The notation that ElementTree uses was originally brought up by
905 <a class="reference external" href="http://www.jclark.com/xml/xmlns.htm">James Clark</a>.  It has the major
906 advantage of providing a universally qualified name for a tag, regardless
907 of any prefixes that may or may not have been used or defined in a document.
908 By moving the indirection of prefixes out of the way, it makes namespace
909 aware code much clearer and easier to get right.</p>
910 <p>As you can see from the example, prefixes only become important when
911 you serialise the result.  However, the above code looks somewhat
912 verbose due to the lengthy namespace names.  And retyping or copying a
913 string over and over again is error prone.  It is therefore common
914 practice to store a namespace URI in a global variable.  To adapt the
915 namespace prefixes for serialisation, you can also pass a mapping to
916 the Element factory function, e.g. to define the default namespace:</p>
917 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">XHTML_NAMESPACE</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"</span>
918 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">XHTML</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"{</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">}"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">XHTML_NAMESPACE</span>
919
920 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">NSMAP</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="bp">None</span> <span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">XHTML_NAMESPACE</span><span class="p">}</span> <span class="c1"># the default namespace (no prefix)</span>
921
922 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">xhtml</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">XHTML</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">"html"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">NSMAP</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="c1"># lxml only!</span>
923 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">XHTML</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">"body"</span><span class="p">)</span>
924 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"Hello World"</span>
925
926 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
927 <span class="go">&lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;</span>
928 <span class="go">  &lt;body&gt;Hello World&lt;/body&gt;</span>
929 <span class="go">&lt;/html&gt;</span>
930 </pre></div>
931 <p>You can also use the <tt class="docutils literal">QName</tt> helper class to build or split qualified
932 tag names:</p>
933 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">QName</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">'html'</span><span class="p">)</span>
934 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">localname</span><span class="p">)</span>
935 <span class="go">html</span>
936 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">namespace</span><span class="p">)</span>
937 <span class="go">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</span>
938 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
939 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html</span>
940
941 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">QName</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html'</span><span class="p">)</span>
942 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">localname</span><span class="p">)</span>
943 <span class="go">html</span>
944 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">namespace</span><span class="p">)</span>
945 <span class="go">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</span>
946
947 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html'</span><span class="p">)</span>
948 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">QName</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
949 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">localname</span><span class="p">)</span>
950 <span class="go">html</span>
951
952 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">QName</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">'script'</span><span class="p">)</span>
953 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
954 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}script</span>
955 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">QName</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">'script'</span><span class="p">)</span>
956 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">text</span><span class="p">)</span>
957 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}script</span>
958 </pre></div>
959 <p>lxml.etree allows you to look up the current namespaces defined for a
960 node through the <tt class="docutils literal">.nsmap</tt> property:</p>
961 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">nsmap</span>
962 <span class="go">{None: 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'}</span>
963 </pre></div>
964 <p>Note, however, that this includes all prefixes known in the context of
965 an Element, not only those that it defines itself.</p>
966 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'root'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="p">{</span><span class="s1">'a'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="s1">'http://a.b/c'</span><span class="p">})</span>
967 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">SubElement</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">'child'</span><span class="p">,</span>
968 <span class="gp">... </span>                         <span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="p">{</span><span class="s1">'b'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="s1">'http://b.c/d'</span><span class="p">})</span>
969 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="p">)</span>
970 <span class="go">1</span>
971 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="p">)</span>
972 <span class="go">2</span>
973 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">'a'</span><span class="p">]</span>
974 <span class="go">'http://a.b/c'</span>
975 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">'b'</span><span class="p">]</span>
976 <span class="go">'http://b.c/d'</span>
977 </pre></div>
978 <p>Therefore, modifying the returned dict cannot have any meaningful
979 impact on the Element.  Any changes to it are ignored.</p>
980 <p>Namespaces on attributes work alike, but as of version 2.3, <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>
981 will ensure that the attribute uses a prefixed namespace
982 declaration.  This is because unprefixed attribute names are not
983 considered being in a namespace by the XML namespace specification
984 (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xml-names-20091208/#defaulting">section 6.2</a>), so they may end up losing their namespace on a
985 serialise-parse roundtrip, even if they appear in a namespaced
986 element.</p>
987 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">set</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">XHTML</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">"bgcolor"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"#CCFFAA"</span><span class="p">)</span>
988
989 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
990 <span class="go">&lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;</span>
991 <span class="go">  &lt;body xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" html:bgcolor="#CCFFAA"&gt;Hello World&lt;/body&gt;</span>
992 <span class="go">&lt;/html&gt;</span>
993
994 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"bgcolor"</span><span class="p">))</span>
995 <span class="go">None</span>
996 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">body</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">XHTML</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">"bgcolor"</span><span class="p">)</span>
997 <span class="go">'#CCFFAA'</span>
998 </pre></div>
999 <p>You can also use XPath with fully qualified names:</p>
1000 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">find_xhtml_body</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ETXPath</span><span class="p">(</span>      <span class="c1"># lxml only !</span>
1001 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="s2">"//{</span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s2">}body"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">XHTML_NAMESPACE</span><span class="p">)</span>
1002 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">results</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">find_xhtml_body</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="p">)</span>
1003
1004 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">results</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1005 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body</span>
1006 </pre></div>
1007 <p>For convenience, you can use <tt class="docutils literal">"*"</tt> wildcards in all iterators of <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt>,
1008 both for tag names and namespaces:</p>
1009 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'*'</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>   <span class="c1"># any element</span>
1010 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html</span>
1011 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body</span>
1012 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}*'</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1013 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html</span>
1014 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body</span>
1015 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{*}body'</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1016 <span class="go">{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body</span>
1017 </pre></div>
1018 <p>To look for elements that do not have a namespace, either use the
1019 plain tag name or provide the empty namespace explicitly:</p>
1020 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body'</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">]</span>
1021 <span class="go">['{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body']</span>
1022 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'body'</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">]</span>
1023 <span class="go">[]</span>
1024 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{}body'</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">]</span>
1025 <span class="go">[]</span>
1026 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">el</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">el</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">xhtml</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">'{}*'</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">]</span>
1027 <span class="go">[]</span>
1028 </pre></div>
1029 </div>
1030 <div class="section" id="the-e-factory">
1031 <h1>The E-factory</h1>
1032 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">E-factory</span></tt> provides a simple and compact syntax for generating XML and
1033 HTML:</p>
1034 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">lxml.builder</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">E</span>
1035
1036 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">CLASS</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">args</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c1"># class is a reserved word in Python</span>
1037 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s2">"class"</span><span class="p">:</span><span class="s1">' '</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">join</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">args</span><span class="p">)}</span>
1038
1039 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">html</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">page</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span>
1040 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">html</span><span class="p">(</span>       <span class="c1"># create an Element called "html"</span>
1041 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">head</span><span class="p">(</span>
1042 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">title</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"This is a sample document"</span><span class="p">)</span>
1043 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="p">),</span>
1044 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">body</span><span class="p">(</span>
1045 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">h1</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Hello!"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">CLASS</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"title"</span><span class="p">)),</span>
1046 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">p</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"This is a paragraph with "</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">b</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"bold"</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="s2">" text in it!"</span><span class="p">),</span>
1047 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">p</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"This is another paragraph, with a"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="se">\n</span><span class="s2">      "</span><span class="p">,</span>
1048 <span class="gp">... </span>        <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"link"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">href</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"http://www.python.org"</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="s2">"."</span><span class="p">),</span>
1049 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">p</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Here are some reserved characters: &lt;spam&amp;egg&gt;."</span><span class="p">),</span>
1050 <span class="gp">... </span>      <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;p&gt;And finally an embedded XHTML fragment.&lt;/p&gt;"</span><span class="p">),</span>
1051 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="p">)</span>
1052 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="p">)</span>
1053 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="p">)</span>
1054
1055 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">page</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
1056 <span class="go">&lt;html&gt;</span>
1057 <span class="go">  &lt;head&gt;</span>
1058 <span class="go">    &lt;title&gt;This is a sample document&lt;/title&gt;</span>
1059 <span class="go">  &lt;/head&gt;</span>
1060 <span class="go">  &lt;body&gt;</span>
1061 <span class="go">    &lt;h1 class="title"&gt;Hello!&lt;/h1&gt;</span>
1062 <span class="go">    &lt;p&gt;This is a paragraph with &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt; text in it!&lt;/p&gt;</span>
1063 <span class="go">    &lt;p&gt;This is another paragraph, with a</span>
1064 <span class="go">      &lt;a href="http://www.python.org"&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</span>
1065 <span class="go">    &lt;p&gt;Here are some reserved characters: &amp;lt;spam&amp;amp;egg&amp;gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</span>
1066 <span class="go">    &lt;p&gt;And finally an embedded XHTML fragment.&lt;/p&gt;</span>
1067 <span class="go">  &lt;/body&gt;</span>
1068 <span class="go">&lt;/html&gt;</span>
1069 </pre></div>
1070 <p>Element creation based on attribute access makes it easy to build up a
1071 simple vocabulary for an XML language:</p>
1072 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">lxml.builder</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">ElementMaker</span> <span class="c1"># lxml only !</span>
1073
1074 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">E</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">ElementMaker</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">namespace</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">"http://my.de/fault/namespace"</span><span class="p">,</span>
1075 <span class="gp">... </span>                 <span class="n">nsmap</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="p">{</span><span class="s1">'p'</span> <span class="p">:</span> <span class="s2">"http://my.de/fault/namespace"</span><span class="p">})</span>
1076
1077 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">DOC</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">doc</span>
1078 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">TITLE</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">title</span>
1079 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">SECTION</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">section</span>
1080 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">PAR</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">E</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">par</span>
1081
1082 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">my_doc</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">DOC</span><span class="p">(</span>
1083 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="n">TITLE</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"The dog and the hog"</span><span class="p">),</span>
1084 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="n">SECTION</span><span class="p">(</span>
1085 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">TITLE</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"The dog"</span><span class="p">),</span>
1086 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">PAR</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Once upon a time, ..."</span><span class="p">),</span>
1087 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">PAR</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"And then ..."</span><span class="p">)</span>
1088 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="p">),</span>
1089 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="n">SECTION</span><span class="p">(</span>
1090 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">TITLE</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"The hog"</span><span class="p">),</span>
1091 <span class="gp">... </span>    <span class="n">PAR</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Sooner or later ..."</span><span class="p">)</span>
1092 <span class="gp">... </span>  <span class="p">)</span>
1093 <span class="gp">... </span><span class="p">)</span>
1094
1095 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">my_doc</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pretty_print</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
1096 <span class="go">&lt;p:doc xmlns:p="http://my.de/fault/namespace"&gt;</span>
1097 <span class="go">  &lt;p:title&gt;The dog and the hog&lt;/p:title&gt;</span>
1098 <span class="go">  &lt;p:section&gt;</span>
1099 <span class="go">    &lt;p:title&gt;The dog&lt;/p:title&gt;</span>
1100 <span class="go">    &lt;p:par&gt;Once upon a time, ...&lt;/p:par&gt;</span>
1101 <span class="go">    &lt;p:par&gt;And then ...&lt;/p:par&gt;</span>
1102 <span class="go">  &lt;/p:section&gt;</span>
1103 <span class="go">  &lt;p:section&gt;</span>
1104 <span class="go">    &lt;p:title&gt;The hog&lt;/p:title&gt;</span>
1105 <span class="go">    &lt;p:par&gt;Sooner or later ...&lt;/p:par&gt;</span>
1106 <span class="go">  &lt;/p:section&gt;</span>
1107 <span class="go">&lt;/p:doc&gt;</span>
1108 </pre></div>
1109 <p>One such example is the module <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.html.builder</tt>, which provides a
1110 vocabulary for HTML.</p>
1111 <p>When dealing with multiple namespaces, it is good practice to define
1112 one ElementMaker for each namespace URI.  Again, note how the above
1113 example predefines the tag builders in named constants.  That makes it
1114 easy to put all tag declarations of a namespace into one Python module
1115 and to import/use the tag name constants from there.  This avoids
1116 pitfalls like typos or accidentally missing namespaces.</p>
1117 </div>
1118 <div class="section" id="elementpath">
1119 <h1>ElementPath</h1>
1120 <p>The ElementTree library comes with a simple XPath-like path language
1121 called <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-xpath.htm">ElementPath</a>.  The main difference is that you can use the
1122 <tt class="docutils literal">{namespace}tag</tt> notation in ElementPath expressions.  However,
1123 advanced features like value comparison and functions are not
1124 available.</p>
1125 <p>In addition to a <a class="reference external" href="xpathxslt.html#xpath">full XPath implementation</a>, <tt class="docutils literal">lxml.etree</tt> supports the
1126 ElementPath language in the same way ElementTree does, even using
1127 (almost) the same implementation.  The API provides four methods here
1128 that you can find on Elements and ElementTrees:</p>
1129 <ul class="simple">
1130 <li><tt class="docutils literal">iterfind()</tt> iterates over all Elements that match the path
1131 expression</li>
1132 <li><tt class="docutils literal">findall()</tt> returns a list of matching Elements</li>
1133 <li><tt class="docutils literal">find()</tt> efficiently returns only the first match</li>
1134 <li><tt class="docutils literal">findtext()</tt> returns the <tt class="docutils literal">.text</tt> content of the first match</li>
1135 </ul>
1136 <p>Here are some examples:</p>
1137 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">XML</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"&lt;root&gt;&lt;a x='123'&gt;aText&lt;b/&gt;&lt;c/&gt;&lt;b/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/root&gt;"</span><span class="p">)</span>
1138 </pre></div>
1139 <p>Find a child of an Element:</p>
1140 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">find</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"b"</span><span class="p">))</span>
1141 <span class="go">None</span>
1142 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">find</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"a"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1143 <span class="go">a</span>
1144 </pre></div>
1145 <p>Find an Element anywhere in the tree:</p>
1146 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">find</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//b"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1147 <span class="go">b</span>
1148 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">b</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">b</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterfind</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//b"</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">]</span>
1149 <span class="go">['b', 'b']</span>
1150 </pre></div>
1151 <p>Find Elements with a certain attribute:</p>
1152 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">findall</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//a[@x]"</span><span class="p">)[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1153 <span class="go">a</span>
1154 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">findall</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//a[@y]"</span><span class="p">))</span>
1155 <span class="go">[]</span>
1156 </pre></div>
1157 <p>In lxml 3.4, there is a new helper to generate a structural ElementPath
1158 expression for an Element:</p>
1159 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ElementTree</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">)</span>
1160 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">a</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">root</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span>
1161 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getelementpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]))</span>
1162 <span class="go">a/b[1]</span>
1163 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getelementpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]))</span>
1164 <span class="go">a/c</span>
1165 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getelementpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">]))</span>
1166 <span class="go">a/b[2]</span>
1167 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">find</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getelementpath</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">]))</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="n">a</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">]</span>
1168 <span class="go">True</span>
1169 </pre></div>
1170 <p>As long as the tree is not modified, this path expression represents an
1171 identifier for a given element that can be used to <tt class="docutils literal">find()</tt> it in the same
1172 tree later.  Compared to XPath, ElementPath expressions have the advantage
1173 of being self-contained even for documents that use namespaces.</p>
1174 <p>The <tt class="docutils literal">.iter()</tt> method is a special case that only finds specific tags
1175 in the tree by their name, not based on a path.  That means that the
1176 following commands are equivalent in the success case:</p>
1177 <div class="syntax"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">find</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//b"</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1178 <span class="go">b</span>
1179 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">next</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iterfind</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">".//b"</span><span class="p">))</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1180 <span class="go">b</span>
1181 <span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">next</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">iter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"b"</span><span class="p">))</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span><span class="p">)</span>
1182 <span class="go">b</span>
1183 </pre></div>
1184 <p>Note that the <tt class="docutils literal">.find()</tt> method simply returns None if no match is found,
1185 whereas the other two examples would raise a <tt class="docutils literal">StopIteration</tt> exception.</p>
1186 </div>
1187 </div>
1188 <div class="footer">
1189 <hr class="footer" />
1190 Generated on: 2020-01-29.
1191
1192 </div>
1193 </body>
1194 </html>