lxml.builder.ElementMaker

Package lxml :: Module builder :: Class ElementMaker

[show private | hide private]

Type ElementMaker

object --+
         |
        ElementMaker

Element generator factory.

Unlike the ordinary Element factory, the E factory allows you to pass in more than just a tag and some optional attributes; you can also pass in text and other elements. The text is added as either text or tail attributes, and elements are inserted at the right spot. Some small examples:

   >>> from lxml import etree as ET
   >>> from lxml.builder import E

   >>> ET.tostring(E("tag"))
   '<tag/>'
   >>> ET.tostring(E("tag", "text"))
   '<tag>text</tag>'
   >>> ET.tostring(E("tag", "text", key="value"))
   '<tag key="value">text</tag>'
   >>> ET.tostring(E("tag", E("subtag", "text"), "tail"))
   '<tag><subtag>text</subtag>tail</tag>'

For simple tags, the factory also allows you to write ``E.tag(...)`` instead of ``E('tag', ...)``:

   >>> ET.tostring(E.tag())
   '<tag/>'
   >>> ET.tostring(E.tag("text"))
   '<tag>text</tag>'
   >>> ET.tostring(E.tag(E.subtag("text"), "tail"))
   '<tag><subtag>text</subtag>tail</tag>'

Here's a somewhat larger example; this shows how to generate HTML documents, using a mix of prepared factory functions for inline elements, nested ``E.tag`` calls, and embedded XHTML fragments:

   # some common inline elements
   A = E.a
   I = E.i
   B = E.b

   def CLASS(v):
       # helper function, 'class' is a reserved word
       return {'class': v}

   page = (
       E.html(
           E.head(
               E.title("This is a sample document")
           ),
           E.body(
               E.h1("Hello!", CLASS("title")),
               E.p("This is a paragraph with ", B("bold"), " text in it!"),
               E.p("This is another paragraph, with a ",
                   A("link", href="http://www.python.org"), "."),
               E.p("Here are some reservered characters: <spam&egg>."),
               ET.XML("<p>And finally, here is an embedded XHTML fragment.</p>"),
           )
       )
   )

   print ET.tostring(page)

Here's a prettyprinted version of the output from the above script:

   <html>
     <head>
       <title>This is a sample document</title>
     </head>
     <body>
       <h1 class="title">Hello!</h1>
       <p>This is a paragraph with <b>bold</b> text in it!</p>
       <p>This is another paragraph, with <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a>.</p>
       <p>Here are some reservered characters: &lt;spam&amp;egg&gt;.</p>
       <p>And finally, here is an embedded XHTML fragment.</p>
     </body>
   </html>

Method Summary
	`__init__(self, typemap, makeelement)`
	`__call__(self, tag, children, *attrib)`
	`__getattr__(self, tag)`
Inherited from object
	`__delattr__(...)` x.__delattr__('name') <==> del x.name
	`__getattribute__(...)` x.__getattribute__('name') <==> x.name
	`__hash__(x)` x.__hash__() <==> hash(x)
	`__new__(T, S, ...)` T.__new__(S, ...) -> a new object with type S, a subtype of T
	`__reduce__(...)` helper for pickle
	`__reduce_ex__(...)` helper for pickle
	`__repr__(x)` x.__repr__() <==> repr(x)
	`__setattr__(...)` x.__setattr__('name', value) <==> x.name = value
	`__str__(x)` x.__str__() <==> str(x)

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