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:mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` --- The ElementTree XML API
========================================================
.. module:: xml.etree.ElementTree
:synopsis: Implementation of the ElementTree API.
.. moduleauthor:: Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@pythonware.com>
**Source code:** :source:`Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py`
--------------
The :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` module implements a simple and efficient API
for parsing and creating XML data.
.. versionchanged:: 3.3
This module will use a fast implementation whenever available.
The :mod:`xml.etree.cElementTree` module is deprecated.
.. warning::
The :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` module is not secure against
maliciously constructed data. If you need to parse untrusted or
unauthenticated data see :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
Tutorial
--------
This is a short tutorial for using :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` (``ET`` in
short). The goal is to demonstrate some of the building blocks and basic
concepts of the module.
XML tree and elements
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
XML is an inherently hierarchical data format, and the most natural way to
represent it is with a tree. ``ET`` has two classes for this purpose -
:class:`ElementTree` represents the whole XML document as a tree, and
:class:`Element` represents a single node in this tree. Interactions with
the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are usually done
on the :class:`ElementTree` level. Interactions with a single XML element
and its sub-elements are done on the :class:`Element` level.
.. _elementtree-parsing-xml:
Parsing XML
^^^^^^^^^^^
We'll be using the following XML document as the sample data for this section:
.. code-block:: xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank>1</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank>4</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank>68</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>
We can import this data by reading from a file::
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('country_data.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
Or directly from a string::
root = ET.fromstring(country_data_as_string)
:func:`fromstring` parses XML from a string directly into an :class:`Element`,
which is the root element of the parsed tree. Other parsing functions may
create an :class:`ElementTree`. Check the documentation to be sure.
As an :class:`Element`, ``root`` has a tag and a dictionary of attributes::
>>> root.tag
'data'
>>> root.attrib
{}
It also has children nodes over which we can iterate::
>>> for child in root:
... print(child.tag, child.attrib)
...
country {'name': 'Liechtenstein'}
country {'name': 'Singapore'}
country {'name': 'Panama'}
Children are nested, and we can access specific child nodes by index::
>>> root[0][1].text
'2008'
.. note::
Not all elements of the XML input will end up as elements of the
parsed tree. Currently, this module skips over any XML comments,
processing instructions, and document type declarations in the
input. Nevertheless, trees built using this module's API rather
than parsing from XML text can have comments and processing
instructions in them; they will be included when generating XML
output. A document type declaration may be accessed by passing a
custom :class:`TreeBuilder` instance to the :class:`XMLParser`
constructor.
.. _elementtree-pull-parsing:
Pull API for non-blocking parsing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Most parsing functions provided by this module require the whole document
to be read at once before returning any result. It is possible to use an
:class:`XMLParser` and feed data into it incrementally, but it is a push API that
calls methods on a callback target, which is too low-level and inconvenient for
most needs. Sometimes what the user really wants is to be able to parse XML
incrementally, without blocking operations, while enjoying the convenience of
fully constructed :class:`Element` objects.
The most powerful tool for doing this is :class:`XMLPullParser`. It does not
require a blocking read to obtain the XML data, and is instead fed with data
incrementally with :meth:`XMLPullParser.feed` calls. To get the parsed XML
elements, call :meth:`XMLPullParser.read_events`. Here is an example::
>>> parser = ET.XMLPullParser(['start', 'end'])
>>> parser.feed('<mytag>sometext')
>>> list(parser.read_events())
[('start', <Element 'mytag' at 0x7fa66db2be58>)]
>>> parser.feed(' more text</mytag>')
>>> for event, elem in parser.read_events():
... print(event)
... print(elem.tag, 'text=', elem.text)
...
end
The obvious use case is applications that operate in a non-blocking fashion
where the XML data is being received from a socket or read incrementally from
some storage device. In such cases, blocking reads are unacceptable.
Because it's so flexible, :class:`XMLPullParser` can be inconvenient to use for
simpler use-cases. If you don't mind your application blocking on reading XML
data but would still like to have incremental parsing capabilities, take a look
at :func:`iterparse`. It can be useful when you're reading a large XML document
and don't want to hold it wholly in memory.
Finding interesting elements
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
:class:`Element` has some useful methods that help iterate recursively over all
the sub-tree below it (its children, their children, and so on). For example,
:meth:`Element.iter`::
>>> for neighbor in root.iter('neighbor'):
... print(neighbor.attrib)
...
{'name': 'Austria', 'direction': 'E'}
{'name': 'Switzerland', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Malaysia', 'direction': 'N'}
{'name': 'Costa Rica', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Colombia', 'direction': 'E'}
:meth:`Element.findall` finds only elements with a tag which are direct
children of the current element. :meth:`Element.find` finds the *first* child
with a particular tag, and :attr:`Element.text` accesses the element's text
content. :meth:`Element.get` accesses the element's attributes::
>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = country.find('rank').text
... name = country.get('name')
... print(name, rank)
...
Liechtenstein 1
Singapore 4
Panama 68
More sophisticated specification of which elements to look for is possible by
using :ref:`XPath <elementtree-xpath>`.
Modifying an XML File
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
:class:`ElementTree` provides a simple way to build XML documents and write them to files.
The :meth:`ElementTree.write` method serves this purpose.
Once created, an :class:`Element` object may be manipulated by directly changing
its fields (such as :attr:`Element.text`), adding and modifying attributes
(:meth:`Element.set` method), as well as adding new children (for example
with :meth:`Element.append`).
Let's say we want to add one to each country's rank, and add an ``updated``
attribute to the rank element::
>>> for rank in root.iter('rank'):
... new_rank = int(rank.text) + 1
... rank.text = str(new_rank)
... rank.set('updated', 'yes')
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')
Our XML now looks like this:
.. code-block:: xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank updated="yes">69</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>
We can remove elements using :meth:`Element.remove`. Let's say we want to
remove all countries with a rank higher than 50::
>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = int(country.find('rank').text)
... if rank > 50:
... root.remove(country)
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')
Our XML now looks like this:
.. code-block:: xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
</data>
Building XML documents
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The :func:`SubElement` function also provides a convenient way to create new
sub-elements for a given element::
>>> a = ET.Element('a')
>>> b = ET.SubElement(a, 'b')
>>> c = ET.SubElement(a, 'c')
>>> d = ET.SubElement(c, 'd')
>>> ET.dump(a)
<a><b /><c><d /></c></a>
Parsing XML with Namespaces
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If the XML input has `namespaces
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_namespace>`__, tags and attributes
with prefixes in the form ``prefix:sometag`` get expanded to
``{uri}sometag`` where the *prefix* is replaced by the full *URI*.
Also, if there is a `default namespace
<https://www.w3.org/TR/xml-names/#defaulting>`__,
that full URI gets prepended to all of the non-prefixed tags.
Here is an XML example that incorporates two namespaces, one with the
prefix "fictional" and the other serving as the default namespace:
.. code-block:: xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<actors xmlns:fictional="http://characters.example.com"
xmlns="http://people.example.com">
<actor>
<name>John Cleese</name>
<fictional:character>Lancelot</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Archie Leach</fictional:character>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Eric Idle</name>
<fictional:character>Sir Robin</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Gunther</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Commander Clement</fictional:character>
</actor>
</actors>
One way to search and explore this XML example is to manually add the
URI to every tag or attribute in the xpath of a
:meth:`~Element.find` or :meth:`~Element.findall`::
root = fromstring(xml_text)
for actor in root.findall('{http://people.example.com}actor'):
name = actor.find('{http://people.example.com}name')
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('{http://characters.example.com}character'):
print(' |-->', char.text)
A better way to search the namespaced XML example is to create a
dictionary with your own prefixes and use those in the search functions::
ns = {'real_person': 'http://people.example.com',
'role': 'http://characters.example.com'}
for actor in root.findall('real_person:actor', ns):
name = actor.find('real_person:name', ns)
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('role:character', ns):
print(' |-->', char.text)
These two approaches both output::
John Cleese
|--> Lancelot
|--> Archie Leach
Eric Idle
|--> Sir Robin
|--> Gunther
|--> Commander Clement
Additional resources
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
See http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm for tutorials and links to other
docs.
.. _elementtree-xpath:
XPath support
-------------
This module provides limited support for
`XPath expressions <https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath>`_ for locating elements in a
tree. The goal is to support a small subset of the abbreviated syntax; a full
XPath engine is outside the scope of the module.
Example
^^^^^^^
Here's an example that demonstrates some of the XPath capabilities of the
module. We'll be using the ``countrydata`` XML document from the
:ref:`Parsing XML <elementtree-parsing-xml>` section::
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
root = ET.fromstring(countrydata)
# Top-level elements
root.findall(".")
# All 'neighbor' grand-children of 'country' children of the top-level
# elements
root.findall("./country/neighbor")
# Nodes with name='Singapore' that have a 'year' child
root.findall(".//year/..[@name='Singapore']")
# 'year' nodes that are children of nodes with name='Singapore'
root.findall(".//*[@name='Singapore']/year")
# All 'neighbor' nodes that are the second child of their parent
root.findall(".//neighbor[2]")
For XML with namespaces, use the usual qualified ``{namespace}tag`` notation::
# All dublin-core "title" tags in the document
root.findall(".//{http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/}title")
Supported XPath syntax
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. tabularcolumns:: |l|L|
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| Syntax | Meaning |
+=======================+======================================================+
| ``tag`` | Selects all child elements with the given tag. |
| | For example, ``spam`` selects all child elements |
| | named ``spam``, and ``spam/egg`` selects all |
| | grandchildren named ``egg`` in all children named |
| | ``spam``. ``{namespace}*`` selects all tags in the |
| | given namespace, ``{*}spam`` selects tags named |
| | ``spam`` in any (or no) namespace, and ``{}*`` |
| | only selects tags that are not in a namespace. |
| | |
| | .. versionchanged:: 3.8 |
| | Support for star-wildcards was added. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``*`` | Selects all child elements, including comments and |
| | processing instructions. For example, ``*/egg`` |
| | selects all grandchildren named ``egg``. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``.`` | Selects the current node. This is mostly useful |
| | at the beginning of the path, to indicate that it's |
| | a relative path. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``//`` | Selects all subelements, on all levels beneath the |
| | current element. For example, ``.//egg`` selects |
| | all ``egg`` elements in the entire tree. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``..`` | Selects the parent element. Returns ``None`` if the |
| | path attempts to reach the ancestors of the start |
| | element (the element ``find`` was called on). |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[@attrib]`` | Selects all elements that have the given attribute. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[@attrib='value']`` | Selects all elements for which the given attribute |
| | has the given value. The value cannot contain |
| | quotes. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[tag]`` | Selects all elements that have a child named |
| | ``tag``. Only immediate children are supported. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[.='text']`` | Selects all elements whose complete text content, |
| | including descendants, equals the given ``text``. |
| | |
| | .. versionadded:: 3.7 |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[tag='text']`` | Selects all elements that have a child named |
| | ``tag`` whose complete text content, including |
| | descendants, equals the given ``text``. |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| ``[position]`` | Selects all elements that are located at the given |
| | position. The position can be either an integer |
| | (1 is the first position), the expression ``last()`` |
| | (for the last position), or a position relative to |
| | the last position (e.g. ``last()-1``). |
+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
Predicates (expressions within square brackets) must be preceded by a tag
name, an asterisk, or another predicate. ``position`` predicates must be
preceded by a tag name.
Reference
---------
.. _elementtree-functions:
Functions
^^^^^^^^^
.. function:: canonicalize(xml_data=None, *, out=None, from_file=None, **options)
`C14N 2.0 <https://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n2/>`_ transformation function.
Canonicalization is a way to normalise XML output in a way that allows
byte-by-byte comparisons and digital signatures. It reduced the freedom
that XML serializers have and instead generates a more constrained XML
representation. The main restrictions regard the placement of namespace
declarations, the ordering of attributes, and ignorable whitespace.
This function takes an XML data string (*xml_data*) or a file path or
file-like object (*from_file*) as input, converts it to the canonical
form, and writes it out using the *out* file(-like) object, if provided,
or returns it as a text string if not. The output file receives text,
not bytes. It should therefore be opened in text mode with ``utf-8``
encoding.
Typical uses::
xml_data = "<root>...</root>"
print(canonicalize(xml_data))
with open("c14n_output.xml", mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as out_file:
canonicalize(xml_data, out=out_file)
with open("c14n_output.xml", mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as out_file:
canonicalize(from_file="inputfile.xml", out=out_file)
The configuration *options* are as follows:
- *with_comments*: set to true to include comments (default: false)
- *strip_text*: set to true to strip whitespace before and after text content
(default: false)
- *rewrite_prefixes*: set to true to replace namespace prefixes by "n{number}"
(default: false)
- *qname_aware_tags*: a set of qname aware tag names in which prefixes
should be replaced in text content (default: empty)
- *qname_aware_attrs*: a set of qname aware attribute names in which prefixes
should be replaced in text content (default: empty)
- *exclude_attrs*: a set of attribute names that should not be serialised
- *exclude_tags*: a set of tag names that should not be serialised
In the option list above, "a set" refers to any collection or iterable of
strings, no ordering is expected.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
.. function:: Comment(text=None)
Comment element factory. This factory function creates a special element
that will be serialized as an XML comment by the standard serializer. The
comment string can be either a bytestring or a Unicode string. *text* is a
string containing the comment string. Returns an element instance
representing a comment.
Note that :class:`XMLParser` skips over comments in the input
instead of creating comment objects for them. An :class:`ElementTree` will
only contain comment nodes if they have been inserted into to
the tree using one of the :class:`Element` methods.
.. function:: dump(elem)
Writes an element tree or element structure to sys.stdout. This function
should be used for debugging only.
The exact output format is implementation dependent. In this version, it's
written as an ordinary XML file.
*elem* is an element tree or an individual element.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The :func:`dump` function now preserves the attribute order specified
by the user.
.. function:: fromstring(text, parser=None)
Parses an XML section from a string constant. Same as :func:`XML`. *text*
is a string containing XML data. *parser* is an optional parser instance.
If not given, the standard :class:`XMLParser` parser is used.
Returns an :class:`Element` instance.
.. function:: fromstringlist(sequence, parser=None)
Parses an XML document from a sequence of string fragments. *sequence* is a
list or other sequence containing XML data fragments. *parser* is an
optional parser instance. If not given, the standard :class:`XMLParser`
parser is used. Returns an :class:`Element` instance.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. function:: indent(tree, space=" ", level=0)
Appends whitespace to the subtree to indent the tree visually.
This can be used to generate pretty-printed XML output.
*tree* can be an Element or ElementTree. *space* is the whitespace
string that will be inserted for each indentation level, two space
characters by default. For indenting partial subtrees inside of an
already indented tree, pass the initial indentation level as *level*.
.. versionadded:: 3.9
.. function:: iselement(element)
Checks if an object appears to be a valid element object. *element* is an
element instance. Returns a true value if this is an element object.
.. function:: iterparse(source, events=None, parser=None)
Parses an XML section into an element tree incrementally, and reports what's
going on to the user. *source* is a filename or :term:`file object`
containing XML data. *events* is a sequence of events to report back. The
supported events are the strings ``"start"``, ``"end"``, ``"comment"``,
``"pi"``, ``"start-ns"`` and ``"end-ns"``
(the "ns" events are used to get detailed namespace
information). If *events* is omitted, only ``"end"`` events are reported.
*parser* is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
:class:`XMLParser` parser is used. *parser* must be a subclass of
:class:`XMLParser` and can only use the default :class:`TreeBuilder` as a
target. Returns an :term:`iterator` providing ``(event, elem)`` pairs.
Note that while :func:`iterparse` builds the tree incrementally, it issues
blocking reads on *source* (or the file it names). As such, it's unsuitable
for applications where blocking reads can't be made. For fully non-blocking
parsing, see :class:`XMLPullParser`.
.. note::
:func:`iterparse` only guarantees that it has seen the ">" character of a
starting tag when it emits a "start" event, so the attributes are defined,
but the contents of the text and tail attributes are undefined at that
point. The same applies to the element children; they may or may not be
present.
If you need a fully populated element, look for "end" events instead.
.. deprecated:: 3.4
The *parser* argument.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The ``comment`` and ``pi`` events were added.
.. function:: parse(source, parser=None)
Parses an XML section into an element tree. *source* is a filename or file
object containing XML data. *parser* is an optional parser instance. If
not given, the standard :class:`XMLParser` parser is used. Returns an
:class:`ElementTree` instance.
.. function:: ProcessingInstruction(target, text=None)
PI element factory. This factory function creates a special element that
will be serialized as an XML processing instruction. *target* is a string
containing the PI target. *text* is a string containing the PI contents, if
given. Returns an element instance, representing a processing instruction.
Note that :class:`XMLParser` skips over processing instructions
in the input instead of creating comment objects for them. An
:class:`ElementTree` will only contain processing instruction nodes if
they have been inserted into to the tree using one of the
:class:`Element` methods.
.. function:: register_namespace(prefix, uri)
Registers a namespace prefix. The registry is global, and any existing
mapping for either the given prefix or the namespace URI will be removed.
*prefix* is a namespace prefix. *uri* is a namespace uri. Tags and
attributes in this namespace will be serialized with the given prefix, if at
all possible.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. function:: SubElement(parent, tag, attrib={}, **extra)
Subelement factory. This function creates an element instance, and appends
it to an existing element.
The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be either
bytestrings or Unicode strings. *parent* is the parent element. *tag* is
the subelement name. *attrib* is an optional dictionary, containing element
attributes. *extra* contains additional attributes, given as keyword
arguments. Returns an element instance.
.. function:: tostring(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, \
xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, \
short_empty_elements=True)
Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. *element* is an :class:`Element` instance. *encoding* [1]_ is
the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use ``encoding="unicode"`` to
generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a bytestring is generated). *method*
is either ``"xml"``, ``"html"`` or ``"text"`` (default is ``"xml"``).
*xml_declaration*, *default_namespace* and *short_empty_elements* has the same
meaning as in :meth:`ElementTree.write`. Returns an (optionally) encoded string
containing the XML data.
.. versionadded:: 3.4
The *short_empty_elements* parameter.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
The *xml_declaration* and *default_namespace* parameters.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The :func:`tostring` function now preserves the attribute order
specified by the user.
.. function:: tostringlist(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, \
xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, \
short_empty_elements=True)
Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. *element* is an :class:`Element` instance. *encoding* [1]_ is
the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use ``encoding="unicode"`` to
generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a bytestring is generated). *method*
is either ``"xml"``, ``"html"`` or ``"text"`` (default is ``"xml"``).
*xml_declaration*, *default_namespace* and *short_empty_elements* has the same
meaning as in :meth:`ElementTree.write`. Returns a list of (optionally) encoded
strings containing the XML data. It does not guarantee any specific sequence,
except that ``b"".join(tostringlist(element)) == tostring(element)``.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. versionadded:: 3.4
The *short_empty_elements* parameter.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
The *xml_declaration* and *default_namespace* parameters.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The :func:`tostringlist` function now preserves the attribute order
specified by the user.
.. function:: XML(text, parser=None)
Parses an XML section from a string constant. This function can be used to
embed "XML literals" in Python code. *text* is a string containing XML
data. *parser* is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
:class:`XMLParser` parser is used. Returns an :class:`Element` instance.
.. function:: XMLID(text, parser=None)
Parses an XML section from a string constant, and also returns a dictionary
which maps from element id:s to elements. *text* is a string containing XML
data. *parser* is an optional parser instance. If not given, the standard
:class:`XMLParser` parser is used. Returns a tuple containing an
:class:`Element` instance and a dictionary.
.. _elementtree-element-objects:
Element Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: Element(tag, attrib={}, **extra)
Element class. This class defines the Element interface, and provides a
reference implementation of this interface.
The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be either
bytestrings or Unicode strings. *tag* is the element name. *attrib* is
an optional dictionary, containing element attributes. *extra* contains
additional attributes, given as keyword arguments.
.. attribute:: tag
A string identifying what kind of data this element represents (the
element type, in other words).
.. attribute:: text
tail
These attributes can be used to hold additional data associated with
the element. Their values are usually strings but may be any
application-specific object. If the element is created from
an XML file, the *text* attribute holds either the text between
the element's start tag and its first child or end tag, or ``None``, and
the *tail* attribute holds either the text between the element's
end tag and the next tag, or ``None``. For the XML data
.. code-block:: xml
<a><b>1<c>2<d/>3</c></b>4</a>
the *a* element has ``None`` for both *text* and *tail* attributes,
the *b* element has *text* ``"1"`` and *tail* ``"4"``,
the *c* element has *text* ``"2"`` and *tail* ``None``,
and the *d* element has *text* ``None`` and *tail* ``"3"``.
To collect the inner text of an element, see :meth:`itertext`, for
example ``"".join(element.itertext())``.
Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.
.. attribute:: attrib
A dictionary containing the element's attributes. Note that while the
*attrib* value is always a real mutable Python dictionary, an ElementTree
implementation may choose to use another internal representation, and
create the dictionary only if someone asks for it. To take advantage of
such implementations, use the dictionary methods below whenever possible.
The following dictionary-like methods work on the element attributes.
.. method:: clear()
Resets an element. This function removes all subelements, clears all
attributes, and sets the text and tail attributes to ``None``.
.. method:: get(key, default=None)
Gets the element attribute named *key*.
Returns the attribute value, or *default* if the attribute was not found.
.. method:: items()
Returns the element attributes as a sequence of (name, value) pairs. The
attributes are returned in an arbitrary order.
.. method:: keys()
Returns the elements attribute names as a list. The names are returned
in an arbitrary order.
.. method:: set(key, value)
Set the attribute *key* on the element to *value*.
The following methods work on the element's children (subelements).
.. method:: append(subelement)
Adds the element *subelement* to the end of this element's internal list
of subelements. Raises :exc:`TypeError` if *subelement* is not an
:class:`Element`.
.. method:: extend(subelements)
Appends *subelements* from a sequence object with zero or more elements.
Raises :exc:`TypeError` if a subelement is not an :class:`Element`.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: find(match, namespaces=None)
Finds the first subelement matching *match*. *match* may be a tag name
or a :ref:`path <elementtree-xpath>`. Returns an element instance
or ``None``. *namespaces* is an optional mapping from namespace prefix
to full name. Pass ``''`` as prefix to move all unprefixed tag names
in the expression into the given namespace.
.. method:: findall(match, namespaces=None)
Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or
:ref:`path <elementtree-xpath>`. Returns a list containing all matching
elements in document order. *namespaces* is an optional mapping from
namespace prefix to full name. Pass ``''`` as prefix to move all
unprefixed tag names in the expression into the given namespace.
.. method:: findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)
Finds text for the first subelement matching *match*. *match* may be
a tag name or a :ref:`path <elementtree-xpath>`. Returns the text content
of the first matching element, or *default* if no element was found.
Note that if the matching element has no text content an empty string
is returned. *namespaces* is an optional mapping from namespace prefix
to full name. Pass ``''`` as prefix to move all unprefixed tag names
in the expression into the given namespace.
.. method:: insert(index, subelement)
Inserts *subelement* at the given position in this element. Raises
:exc:`TypeError` if *subelement* is not an :class:`Element`.
.. method:: iter(tag=None)
Creates a tree :term:`iterator` with the current element as the root.
The iterator iterates over this element and all elements below it, in
document (depth first) order. If *tag* is not ``None`` or ``'*'``, only
elements whose tag equals *tag* are returned from the iterator. If the
tree structure is modified during iteration, the result is undefined.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: iterfind(match, namespaces=None)
Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or
:ref:`path <elementtree-xpath>`. Returns an iterable yielding all
matching elements in document order. *namespaces* is an optional mapping
from namespace prefix to full name.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: itertext()
Creates a text iterator. The iterator loops over this element and all
subelements, in document order, and returns all inner text.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: makeelement(tag, attrib)
Creates a new element object of the same type as this element. Do not
call this method, use the :func:`SubElement` factory function instead.
.. method:: remove(subelement)
Removes *subelement* from the element. Unlike the find\* methods this
method compares elements based on the instance identity, not on tag value
or contents.
:class:`Element` objects also support the following sequence type methods
for working with subelements: :meth:`~object.__delitem__`,
:meth:`~object.__getitem__`, :meth:`~object.__setitem__`,
:meth:`~object.__len__`.
Caution: Elements with no subelements will test as ``False``. This behavior
will change in future versions. Use specific ``len(elem)`` or ``elem is
None`` test instead. ::
element = root.find('foo')
if not element: # careful!
print("element not found, or element has no subelements")
if element is None:
print("element not found")
Prior to Python 3.8, the serialisation order of the XML attributes of
elements was artificially made predictable by sorting the attributes by
their name. Based on the now guaranteed ordering of dicts, this arbitrary
reordering was removed in Python 3.8 to preserve the order in which
attributes were originally parsed or created by user code.
In general, user code should try not to depend on a specific ordering of
attributes, given that the `XML Information Set
<https://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/>`_ explicitly excludes the attribute
order from conveying information. Code should be prepared to deal with
any ordering on input. In cases where deterministic XML output is required,
e.g. for cryptographic signing or test data sets, canonical serialisation
is available with the :func:`canonicalize` function.
In cases where canonical output is not applicable but a specific attribute
order is still desirable on output, code should aim for creating the
attributes directly in the desired order, to avoid perceptual mismatches
for readers of the code. In cases where this is difficult to achieve, a
recipe like the following can be applied prior to serialisation to enforce
an order independently from the Element creation::
def reorder_attributes(root):
for el in root.iter():
attrib = el.attrib
if len(attrib) > 1:
# adjust attribute order, e.g. by sorting
attribs = sorted(attrib.items())
attrib.clear()
attrib.update(attribs)
.. _elementtree-elementtree-objects:
ElementTree Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: ElementTree(element=None, file=None)
ElementTree wrapper class. This class represents an entire element
hierarchy, and adds some extra support for serialization to and from
standard XML.
*element* is the root element. The tree is initialized with the contents
of the XML *file* if given.
.. method:: _setroot(element)
Replaces the root element for this tree. This discards the current
contents of the tree, and replaces it with the given element. Use with
care. *element* is an element instance.
.. method:: find(match, namespaces=None)
Same as :meth:`Element.find`, starting at the root of the tree.
.. method:: findall(match, namespaces=None)
Same as :meth:`Element.findall`, starting at the root of the tree.
.. method:: findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)
Same as :meth:`Element.findtext`, starting at the root of the tree.
.. method:: getroot()
Returns the root element for this tree.
.. method:: iter(tag=None)
Creates and returns a tree iterator for the root element. The iterator
loops over all elements in this tree, in section order. *tag* is the tag
to look for (default is to return all elements).
.. method:: iterfind(match, namespaces=None)
Same as :meth:`Element.iterfind`, starting at the root of the tree.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: parse(source, parser=None)
Loads an external XML section into this element tree. *source* is a file
name or :term:`file object`. *parser* is an optional parser instance.
If not given, the standard :class:`XMLParser` parser is used. Returns the
section root element.
.. method:: write(file, encoding="us-ascii", xml_declaration=None, \
default_namespace=None, method="xml", *, \
short_empty_elements=True)
Writes the element tree to a file, as XML. *file* is a file name, or a
:term:`file object` opened for writing. *encoding* [1]_ is the output
encoding (default is US-ASCII).
*xml_declaration* controls if an XML declaration should be added to the
file. Use ``False`` for never, ``True`` for always, ``None``
for only if not US-ASCII or UTF-8 or Unicode (default is ``None``).
*default_namespace* sets the default XML namespace (for "xmlns").
*method* is either ``"xml"``, ``"html"`` or ``"text"`` (default is
``"xml"``).
The keyword-only *short_empty_elements* parameter controls the formatting
of elements that contain no content. If ``True`` (the default), they are
emitted as a single self-closed tag, otherwise they are emitted as a pair
of start/end tags.
The output is either a string (:class:`str`) or binary (:class:`bytes`).
This is controlled by the *encoding* argument. If *encoding* is
``"unicode"``, the output is a string; otherwise, it's binary. Note that
this may conflict with the type of *file* if it's an open
:term:`file object`; make sure you do not try to write a string to a
binary stream and vice versa.
.. versionadded:: 3.4
The *short_empty_elements* parameter.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The :meth:`write` method now preserves the attribute order specified
by the user.
This is the XML file that is going to be manipulated::
<html>
<head>
<title>Example page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Moved to <a href="http://example.org/">example.org</a>
or <a href="http://example.com/">example.com</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Example of changing the attribute "target" of every link in first paragraph::
>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree
>>> tree = ElementTree()
>>> tree.parse("index.xhtml")
<Element 'html' at 0xb77e6fac>
>>> p = tree.find("body/p") # Finds first occurrence of tag p in body
>>> p
<Element 'p' at 0xb77ec26c>
>>> links = list(p.iter("a")) # Returns list of all links
>>> links
[<Element 'a' at 0xb77ec2ac>, <Element 'a' at 0xb77ec1cc>]
>>> for i in links: # Iterates through all found links
... i.attrib["target"] = "blank"
>>> tree.write("output.xhtml")
.. _elementtree-qname-objects:
QName Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: QName(text_or_uri, tag=None)
QName wrapper. This can be used to wrap a QName attribute value, in order
to get proper namespace handling on output. *text_or_uri* is a string
containing the QName value, in the form {uri}local, or, if the tag argument
is given, the URI part of a QName. If *tag* is given, the first argument is
interpreted as a URI, and this argument is interpreted as a local name.
:class:`QName` instances are opaque.
.. _elementtree-treebuilder-objects:
TreeBuilder Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: TreeBuilder(element_factory=None, *, comment_factory=None, \
pi_factory=None, insert_comments=False, insert_pis=False)
Generic element structure builder. This builder converts a sequence of
start, data, end, comment and pi method calls to a well-formed element
structure. You can use this class to build an element structure using
a custom XML parser, or a parser for some other XML-like format.
*element_factory*, when given, must be a callable accepting two positional
arguments: a tag and a dict of attributes. It is expected to return a new
element instance.
The *comment_factory* and *pi_factory* functions, when given, should behave
like the :func:`Comment` and :func:`ProcessingInstruction` functions to
create comments and processing instructions. When not given, the default
factories will be used. When *insert_comments* and/or *insert_pis* is true,
comments/pis will be inserted into the tree if they appear within the root
element (but not outside of it).
.. method:: close()
Flushes the builder buffers, and returns the toplevel document
element. Returns an :class:`Element` instance.
.. method:: data(data)
Adds text to the current element. *data* is a string. This should be
either a bytestring, or a Unicode string.
.. method:: end(tag)
Closes the current element. *tag* is the element name. Returns the
closed element.
.. method:: start(tag, attrs)
Opens a new element. *tag* is the element name. *attrs* is a dictionary
containing element attributes. Returns the opened element.
.. method:: comment(text)
Creates a comment with the given *text*. If ``insert_comments`` is true,
this will also add it to the tree.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
.. method:: pi(target, text)
Creates a comment with the given *target* name and *text*. If
``insert_pis`` is true, this will also add it to the tree.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
In addition, a custom :class:`TreeBuilder` object can provide the
following methods:
.. method:: doctype(name, pubid, system)
Handles a doctype declaration. *name* is the doctype name. *pubid* is
the public identifier. *system* is the system identifier. This method
does not exist on the default :class:`TreeBuilder` class.
.. versionadded:: 3.2
.. method:: start_ns(prefix, uri)
Is called whenever the parser encounters a new namespace declaration,
before the ``start()`` callback for the opening element that defines it.
*prefix* is ``''`` for the default namespace and the declared
namespace prefix name otherwise. *uri* is the namespace URI.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
.. method:: end_ns(prefix)
Is called after the ``end()`` callback of an element that declared
a namespace prefix mapping, with the name of the *prefix* that went
out of scope.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
.. class:: C14NWriterTarget(write, *, \
with_comments=False, strip_text=False, rewrite_prefixes=False, \
qname_aware_tags=None, qname_aware_attrs=None, \
exclude_attrs=None, exclude_tags=None)
A `C14N 2.0 <https://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n2/>`_ writer. Arguments are the
same as for the :func:`canonicalize` function. This class does not build a
tree but translates the callback events directly into a serialised form
using the *write* function.
.. versionadded:: 3.8
.. _elementtree-xmlparser-objects:
XMLParser Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: XMLParser(*, target=None, encoding=None)
This class is the low-level building block of the module. It uses
:mod:`xml.parsers.expat` for efficient, event-based parsing of XML. It can
be fed XML data incrementally with the :meth:`feed` method, and parsing
events are translated to a push API - by invoking callbacks on the *target*
object. If *target* is omitted, the standard :class:`TreeBuilder` is used.
If *encoding* [1]_ is given, the value overrides the
encoding specified in the XML file.
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
Parameters are now :ref:`keyword-only <keyword-only_parameter>`.
The *html* argument no longer supported.
.. method:: close()
Finishes feeding data to the parser. Returns the result of calling the
``close()`` method of the *target* passed during construction; by default,
this is the toplevel document element.
.. method:: feed(data)
Feeds data to the parser. *data* is encoded data.
:meth:`XMLParser.feed` calls *target*\'s ``start(tag, attrs_dict)`` method
for each opening tag, its ``end(tag)`` method for each closing tag, and data
is processed by method ``data(data)``. For further supported callback
methods, see the :class:`TreeBuilder` class. :meth:`XMLParser.close` calls
*target*\'s method ``close()``. :class:`XMLParser` can be used not only for
building a tree structure. This is an example of counting the maximum depth
of an XML file::
>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import XMLParser
>>> class MaxDepth: # The target object of the parser
... maxDepth = 0
... depth = 0
... def start(self, tag, attrib): # Called for each opening tag.
... self.depth += 1
... if self.depth > self.maxDepth:
... self.maxDepth = self.depth
... def end(self, tag): # Called for each closing tag.
... self.depth -= 1
... def data(self, data):
... pass # We do not need to do anything with data.
... def close(self): # Called when all data has been parsed.
... return self.maxDepth
...
>>> target = MaxDepth()
>>> parser = XMLParser(target=target)
>>> exampleXml = """
... <a>
... <b>
... </b>
... <b>
... <c>
... <d>
... </d>
... </c>
... </b>
... </a>"""
>>> parser.feed(exampleXml)
>>> parser.close()
4
.. _elementtree-xmlpullparser-objects:
XMLPullParser Objects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: XMLPullParser(events=None)
A pull parser suitable for non-blocking applications. Its input-side API is
similar to that of :class:`XMLParser`, but instead of pushing calls to a
callback target, :class:`XMLPullParser` collects an internal list of parsing
events and lets the user read from it. *events* is a sequence of events to
report back. The supported events are the strings ``"start"``, ``"end"``,
``"comment"``, ``"pi"``, ``"start-ns"`` and ``"end-ns"`` (the "ns" events
are used to get detailed namespace information). If *events* is omitted,
only ``"end"`` events are reported.
.. method:: feed(data)
Feed the given bytes data to the parser.
.. method:: close()
Signal the parser that the data stream is terminated. Unlike
:meth:`XMLParser.close`, this method always returns :const:`None`.
Any events not yet retrieved when the parser is closed can still be
read with :meth:`read_events`.
.. method:: read_events()
Return an iterator over the events which have been encountered in the
data fed to the
parser. The iterator yields ``(event, elem)`` pairs, where *event* is a
string representing the type of event (e.g. ``"end"``) and *elem* is the
encountered :class:`Element` object, or other context value as follows.
* ``start``, ``end``: the current Element.
* ``comment``, ``pi``: the current comment / processing instruction
* ``start-ns``: a tuple ``(prefix, uri)`` naming the declared namespace
mapping.
* ``end-ns``: :const:`None` (this may change in a future version)
Events provided in a previous call to :meth:`read_events` will not be
yielded again. Events are consumed from the internal queue only when
they are retrieved from the iterator, so multiple readers iterating in
parallel over iterators obtained from :meth:`read_events` will have
unpredictable results.
.. note::
:class:`XMLPullParser` only guarantees that it has seen the ">"
character of a starting tag when it emits a "start" event, so the
attributes are defined, but the contents of the text and tail attributes
are undefined at that point. The same applies to the element children;
they may or may not be present.
If you need a fully populated element, look for "end" events instead.
.. versionadded:: 3.4
.. versionchanged:: 3.8
The ``comment`` and ``pi`` events were added.
Exceptions
^^^^^^^^^^
.. class:: ParseError
XML parse error, raised by the various parsing methods in this module when
parsing fails. The string representation of an instance of this exception
will contain a user-friendly error message. In addition, it will have
the following attributes available:
.. attribute:: code
A numeric error code from the expat parser. See the documentation of
:mod:`xml.parsers.expat` for the list of error codes and their meanings.
.. attribute:: position
A tuple of *line*, *column* numbers, specifying where the error occurred.
.. rubric:: Footnotes
.. [1] The encoding string included in XML output should conform to the
appropriate standards. For example, "UTF-8" is valid, but "UTF8" is
not. See https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/#NT-EncodingDecl
and https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml.
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