Package lxml :: Module etree
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Module etree

The lxml.etree module implements the extended ElementTree API for XML.

Version: 2.3.6

Classes [hide private]
  AncestorsIterator
AncestorsIterator(self, node, tag=None) Iterates over the ancestors of an element (from parent to parent).
  AttributeBasedElementClassLookup
AttributeBasedElementClassLookup(self, attribute_name, class_mapping, fallback=None) Checks an attribute of an Element and looks up the value in a class dictionary.
  C14NError
Error during C14N serialisation.
  CDATA
CDATA(data)
  CommentBase
All custom Comment classes must inherit from this one.
  CustomElementClassLookup
CustomElementClassLookup(self, fallback=None) Element class lookup based on a subclass method.
  DTD
DTD(self, file=None, external_id=None) A DTD validator.
  DTDError
Base class for DTD errors.
  DTDParseError
Error while parsing a DTD.
  DTDValidateError
Error while validating an XML document with a DTD.
  DocInfo
Document information provided by parser and DTD.
  DocumentInvalid
Validation error.
  ETCompatXMLParser
ETCompatXMLParser(self, encoding=None, attribute_defaults=False, dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False, no_network=True, ns_clean=False, recover=False, schema=None, huge_tree=False, remove_blank_text=False, resolve_entities=True, remove_comments=True, remove_pis=True, strip_cdata=True, target=None, compact=True)
  ETXPath
ETXPath(self, path, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True) Special XPath class that supports the ElementTree {uri} notation for namespaces.
  ElementBase
ElementBase(*children, attrib=None, nsmap=None, **_extra)
  ElementChildIterator
ElementChildIterator(self, node, tag=None, reversed=False) Iterates over the children of an element.
  ElementClassLookup
ElementClassLookup(self) Superclass of Element class lookups.
  ElementDefaultClassLookup
ElementDefaultClassLookup(self, element=None, comment=None, pi=None, entity=None) Element class lookup scheme that always returns the default Element class.
  ElementDepthFirstIterator
ElementDepthFirstIterator(self, node, tag=None, inclusive=True) Iterates over an element and its sub-elements in document order (depth first pre-order).
  ElementNamespaceClassLookup
ElementNamespaceClassLookup(self, fallback=None)
  ElementTextIterator
ElementTextIterator(self, element, tag=None, with_tail=True) Iterates over the text content of a subtree.
  EntityBase
All custom Entity classes must inherit from this one.
  Error
  ErrorDomains
Libxml2 error domains
  ErrorLevels
Libxml2 error levels
  ErrorTypes
Libxml2 error types
  FallbackElementClassLookup
FallbackElementClassLookup(self, fallback=None)
  HTMLParser
HTMLParser(self, encoding=None, remove_blank_text=False, remove_comments=False, remove_pis=False, strip_cdata=True, no_network=True, target=None, XMLSchema schema=None, recover=True, compact=True)
  LxmlError
Main exception base class for lxml. All other exceptions inherit from this one.
  LxmlRegistryError
Base class of lxml registry errors.
  LxmlSyntaxError
Base class for all syntax errors.
  NamespaceRegistryError
Error registering a namespace extension.
  PIBase
All custom Processing Instruction classes must inherit from this one.
  ParseError
Syntax error while parsing an XML document.
  ParserBasedElementClassLookup
ParserBasedElementClassLookup(self, fallback=None) Element class lookup based on the XML parser.
  ParserError
Internal lxml parser error.
  PyErrorLog
PyErrorLog(self, logger_name=None, logger=None) A global error log that connects to the Python stdlib logging package.
  PythonElementClassLookup
PythonElementClassLookup(self, fallback=None) Element class lookup based on a subclass method.
  QName
QName(text_or_uri_or_element, tag=None)
  RelaxNG
RelaxNG(self, etree=None, file=None) Turn a document into a Relax NG validator.
  RelaxNGError
Base class for RelaxNG errors.
  RelaxNGErrorTypes
Libxml2 RelaxNG error types
  RelaxNGParseError
Error while parsing an XML document as RelaxNG.
  RelaxNGValidateError
Error while validating an XML document with a RelaxNG schema.
  Resolver
This is the base class of all resolvers.
  Schematron
Schematron(self, etree=None, file=None) A Schematron validator.
  SchematronError
Base class of all Schematron errors.
  SchematronParseError
Error while parsing an XML document as Schematron schema.
  SchematronValidateError
Error while validating an XML document with a Schematron schema.
  SerialisationError
A libxml2 error that occurred during serialisation.
  SiblingsIterator
SiblingsIterator(self, node, tag=None, preceding=False) Iterates over the siblings of an element.
  TreeBuilder
TreeBuilder(self, element_factory=None, parser=None) Parser target that builds a tree.
  XInclude
XInclude(self) XInclude processor.
  XIncludeError
Error during XInclude processing.
  XMLParser
XMLParser(self, encoding=None, attribute_defaults=False, dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False, no_network=True, ns_clean=False, recover=False, XMLSchema schema=None, remove_blank_text=False, resolve_entities=True, remove_comments=False, remove_pis=False, strip_cdata=True, target=None, compact=True)
  XMLSchema
XMLSchema(self, etree=None, file=None) Turn a document into an XML Schema validator.
  XMLSchemaError
Base class of all XML Schema errors
  XMLSchemaParseError
Error while parsing an XML document as XML Schema.
  XMLSchemaValidateError
Error while validating an XML document with an XML Schema.
  XMLSyntaxError
Syntax error while parsing an XML document.
  XMLTreeBuilder
ETCompatXMLParser(self, encoding=None, attribute_defaults=False, dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False, no_network=True, ns_clean=False, recover=False, schema=None, huge_tree=False, remove_blank_text=False, resolve_entities=True, remove_comments=True, remove_pis=True, strip_cdata=True, target=None, compact=True)
  XPath
XPath(self, path, namespaces=None, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True) A compiled XPath expression that can be called on Elements and ElementTrees.
  XPathDocumentEvaluator
XPathDocumentEvaluator(self, etree, namespaces=None, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True) Create an XPath evaluator for an ElementTree.
  XPathElementEvaluator
XPathElementEvaluator(self, element, namespaces=None, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True) Create an XPath evaluator for an element.
  XPathError
Base class of all XPath errors.
  XPathEvalError
Error during XPath evaluation.
  XPathFunctionError
Internal error looking up an XPath extension function.
  XPathResultError
Error handling an XPath result.
  XPathSyntaxError
  XSLT
XSLT(self, xslt_input, extensions=None, regexp=True, access_control=None)
  XSLTAccessControl
XSLTAccessControl(self, read_file=True, write_file=True, create_dir=True, read_network=True, write_network=True)
  XSLTApplyError
Error running an XSL transformation.
  XSLTError
Base class of all XSLT errors.
  XSLTExtension
Base class of an XSLT extension element.
  XSLTExtensionError
Error registering an XSLT extension.
  XSLTParseError
Error parsing a stylesheet document.
  XSLTSaveError
Error serialising an XSLT result.
  _Attrib
A dict-like proxy for the Element.attrib property.
  _BaseErrorLog
  _Comment
  _Document
Internal base class to reference a libxml document.
  _DomainErrorLog
  _Element
Element class.
  _ElementIterator
Dead but public. :)
  _ElementMatchIterator
  _ElementStringResult
  _ElementTagMatcher
Dead but public. :)
  _ElementTree
  _ElementUnicodeResult
  _Entity
  _ErrorLog
  _FeedParser
  _IDDict
IDDict(self, etree) A dictionary-like proxy class that mapps ID attributes to elements.
  _ListErrorLog
Immutable base version of a list based error log.
  _LogEntry
A log message entry from an error log.
  _ProcessingInstruction
  _RotatingErrorLog
  _SaxParserTarget
  _TargetParserResult
  _Validator
Base class for XML validators.
  _XPathEvaluatorBase
  _XSLTProcessingInstruction
  _XSLTResultTree
  iterparse
iterparse(self, source, events=("end",), tag=None, attribute_defaults=False, dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False, no_network=True, remove_blank_text=False, remove_comments=False, remove_pis=False, encoding=None, html=False, huge_tree=False, schema=None)
  iterwalk
iterwalk(self, element_or_tree, events=("end",), tag=None)
  xmlfile
xmlfile(self, output_file, encoding=None, compression=None)
Functions [hide private]
 
Comment(text=None)
Comment element factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML comment.
 
Element(_tag, attrib=None, nsmap=None, **_extra)
Element factory. This function returns an object implementing the Element interface.
 
ElementTree(element=None, file=None, parser=None)
ElementTree wrapper class.
 
Entity(name)
Entity factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML entity reference or character reference. Note, however, that entities will not be automatically declared in the document. A document that uses entity references requires a DTD to define the entities.
 
Extension(module, function_mapping=None, ns=None)
Build a dictionary of extension functions from the functions defined in a module or the methods of an object.
 
FunctionNamespace(ns_uri)
Retrieve the function namespace object associated with the given URI.
 
HTML(text, parser=None, base_url=None)
Parses an HTML document from a string constant. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target). This function can be used to embed "HTML literals" in Python code.
 
PI(target, text=None)
ProcessingInstruction element factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML processing instruction.
 
ProcessingInstruction(target, text=None)
ProcessingInstruction element factory. This factory function creates a special element that will be serialized as an XML processing instruction.
 
SubElement(_parent, _tag, attrib=None, nsmap=None, **_extra)
Subelement factory. This function creates an element instance, and appends it to an existing element.
 
XML(text, parser=None, base_url=None)
Parses an XML document or fragment from a string constant. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target). This function can be used to embed "XML literals" in Python code, like in
 
XMLDTDID(text, parser=None, base_url=None)
Parse the text and return a tuple (root node, ID dictionary). The root node is the same as returned by the XML() function. The dictionary contains string-element pairs. The dictionary keys are the values of ID attributes as defined by the DTD. The elements referenced by the ID are stored as dictionary values.
 
XMLID(text, parser=None, base_url=None)
Parse the text and return a tuple (root node, ID dictionary). The root node is the same as returned by the XML() function. The dictionary contains string-element pairs. The dictionary keys are the values of 'id' attributes. The elements referenced by the ID are stored as dictionary values.
 
XPathEvaluator(etree_or_element, namespaces=None, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True)
Creates an XPath evaluator for an ElementTree or an Element.
 
cleanup_namespaces(tree_or_element)
Remove all namespace declarations from a subtree that are not used by any of the elements or attributes in that tree.
 
clear_error_log()
Clear the global error log. Note that this log is already bound to a fixed size.
 
dump(elem, pretty_print=True, with_tail=True)
Writes an element tree or element structure to sys.stdout. This function should be used for debugging only.
 
fromstring(text, parser=None, base_url=None)
Parses an XML document or fragment from a string. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target).
 
fromstringlist(strings, parser=None)
Parses an XML document from a sequence of strings. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target).
 
get_default_parser()
 
iselement(element)
Checks if an object appears to be a valid element object.
 
parse(source, parser=None, base_url=None)
Return an ElementTree object loaded with source elements. If no parser is provided as second argument, the default parser is used.
 
parseid(source, parser=None)
Parses the source into a tuple containing an ElementTree object and an ID dictionary. If no parser is provided as second argument, the default parser is used.
 
register_namespace(...)
Registers a namespace prefix that newly created Elements in that namespace will use. The registry is global, and any existing mapping for either the given prefix or the namespace URI will be removed.
 
set_default_parser(parser=None)
Set a default parser for the current thread. This parser is used globally whenever no parser is supplied to the various parse functions of the lxml API. If this function is called without a parser (or if it is None), the default parser is reset to the original configuration.
 
set_element_class_lookup(lookup= None)
Set the global default element class lookup method.
 
strip_attributes(tree_or_element, *attribute_names)
Delete all attributes with the provided attribute names from an Element (or ElementTree) and its descendants.
 
strip_elements(tree_or_element, with_tail=True, *tag_names)
Delete all elements with the provided tag names from a tree or subtree. This will remove the elements and their entire subtree, including all their attributes, text content and descendants. It will also remove the tail text of the element unless you explicitly set the with_tail keyword argument option to False.
 
strip_tags(tree_or_element, *tag_names)
Delete all elements with the provided tag names from a tree or subtree. This will remove the elements and their attributes, but not their text/tail content or descendants. Instead, it will merge the text content and children of the element into its parent.
 
tostring(element_or_tree, encoding=None, method="xml", xml_declaration=None, pretty_print=False, with_tail=True, standalone=None, doctype=None, exclusive=False, with_comments=True, inclusive_ns_prefixes=None)
Serialize an element to an encoded string representation of its XML tree.
 
tostringlist(element_or_tree, *args, **kwargs)
Serialize an element to an encoded string representation of its XML tree, stored in a list of partial strings.
 
tounicode(element_or_tree, method="xml", pretty_print=False, with_tail=True, doctype=None)
Serialize an element to the Python unicode representation of its XML tree.
 
use_global_python_log(log)
Replace the global error log by an etree.PyErrorLog that uses the standard Python logging package.
Variables [hide private]
  DEBUG = 1
  LIBXML_COMPILED_VERSION = (2, 9, 1)
  LIBXML_VERSION = (2, 9, 1)
  LIBXSLT_COMPILED_VERSION = (1, 1, 28)
  LIBXSLT_VERSION = (1, 1, 28)
  LXML_VERSION = (2, 3, 6, 0)
  __package__ = None
hash(x)
  __pyx_capi__ = {'appendChild': <capsule object "void (struct L...
  __test__ = {u'XML (line 2951)': u'XML(text, parser=None, base_...
  memory_debugger = <lxml.etree._MemDebug object at 0x2afe9ec068e0>
Function Details [hide private]

Element(_tag, attrib=None, nsmap=None, **_extra)

 

Element factory. This function returns an object implementing the Element interface.

Also look at the _Element.makeelement() and _BaseParser.makeelement() methods, which provide a faster way to create an Element within a specific document or parser context.

Extension(module, function_mapping=None, ns=None)

 

Build a dictionary of extension functions from the functions defined in a module or the methods of an object.

As second argument, you can pass an additional mapping of attribute names to XPath function names, or a list of function names that should be taken.

The ns keyword argument accepts a namespace URI for the XPath functions.

FunctionNamespace(ns_uri)

 

Retrieve the function namespace object associated with the given URI.

Creates a new one if it does not yet exist. A function namespace can only be used to register extension functions.

HTML(text, parser=None, base_url=None)

 

Parses an HTML document from a string constant. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target). This function can be used to embed "HTML literals" in Python code.

To override the parser with a different HTMLParser you can pass it to the parser keyword argument.

The base_url keyword argument allows to set the original base URL of the document to support relative Paths when looking up external entities (DTD, XInclude, ...).

XML(text, parser=None, base_url=None)

 

Parses an XML document or fragment from a string constant. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target). This function can be used to embed "XML literals" in Python code, like in

>>> root = etree.XML("<root><test/></root>")

To override the parser with a different XMLParser you can pass it to the parser keyword argument.

The base_url keyword argument allows to set the original base URL of the document to support relative Paths when looking up external entities (DTD, XInclude, ...).

XMLDTDID(text, parser=None, base_url=None)

 

Parse the text and return a tuple (root node, ID dictionary). The root node is the same as returned by the XML() function. The dictionary contains string-element pairs. The dictionary keys are the values of ID attributes as defined by the DTD. The elements referenced by the ID are stored as dictionary values.

Note that you must not modify the XML tree if you use the ID dictionary. The results are undefined.

XPathEvaluator(etree_or_element, namespaces=None, extensions=None, regexp=True, smart_strings=True)

 

Creates an XPath evaluator for an ElementTree or an Element.

The resulting object can be called with an XPath expression as argument and XPath variables provided as keyword arguments.

Additional namespace declarations can be passed with the 'namespace' keyword argument. EXSLT regular expression support can be disabled with the 'regexp' boolean keyword (defaults to True). Smart strings will be returned for string results unless you pass smart_strings=False.

clear_error_log()

 

Clear the global error log. Note that this log is already bound to a fixed size.

Note: since lxml 2.2, the global error log is local to a thread and this function will only clear the global error log of the current thread.

fromstring(text, parser=None, base_url=None)

 

Parses an XML document or fragment from a string. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target).

To override the default parser with a different parser you can pass it to the parser keyword argument.

The base_url keyword argument allows to set the original base URL of the document to support relative Paths when looking up external entities (DTD, XInclude, ...).

fromstringlist(strings, parser=None)

 

Parses an XML document from a sequence of strings. Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target).

To override the default parser with a different parser you can pass it to the parser keyword argument.

parse(source, parser=None, base_url=None)

 

Return an ElementTree object loaded with source elements. If no parser is provided as second argument, the default parser is used.

The source can be any of the following:

  • a file name/path
  • a file object
  • a file-like object
  • a URL using the HTTP or FTP protocol

To parse from a string, use the fromstring() function instead.

Note that it is generally faster to parse from a file path or URL than from an open file object or file-like object. Transparent decompression from gzip compressed sources is supported (unless explicitly disabled in libxml2).

The base_url keyword allows setting a URL for the document when parsing from a file-like object. This is needed when looking up external entities (DTD, XInclude, ...) with relative paths.

parseid(source, parser=None)

 

Parses the source into a tuple containing an ElementTree object and an ID dictionary. If no parser is provided as second argument, the default parser is used.

Note that you must not modify the XML tree if you use the ID dictionary. The results are undefined.

set_default_parser(parser=None)

 

Set a default parser for the current thread. This parser is used globally whenever no parser is supplied to the various parse functions of the lxml API. If this function is called without a parser (or if it is None), the default parser is reset to the original configuration.

Note that the pre-installed default parser is not thread-safe. Avoid the default parser in multi-threaded environments. You can create a separate parser for each thread explicitly or use a parser pool.

strip_attributes(tree_or_element, *attribute_names)

 

Delete all attributes with the provided attribute names from an Element (or ElementTree) and its descendants.

Attribute names can contain wildcards as in _Element.iter.

Example usage:

strip_attributes(root_element,
                 'simpleattr',
                 '{http://some/ns}attrname',
                 '{http://other/ns}*')

strip_elements(tree_or_element, with_tail=True, *tag_names)

 

Delete all elements with the provided tag names from a tree or subtree. This will remove the elements and their entire subtree, including all their attributes, text content and descendants. It will also remove the tail text of the element unless you explicitly set the with_tail keyword argument option to False.

Tag names can contain wildcards as in _Element.iter.

Note that this will not delete the element (or ElementTree root element) that you passed even if it matches. It will only treat its descendants. If you want to include the root element, check its tag name directly before even calling this function.

Example usage:

strip_elements(some_element,
    'simpletagname',             # non-namespaced tag
    '{http://some/ns}tagname',   # namespaced tag
    '{http://some/other/ns}*'    # any tag from a namespace
    lxml.etree.Comment           # comments
    )

strip_tags(tree_or_element, *tag_names)

 

Delete all elements with the provided tag names from a tree or subtree. This will remove the elements and their attributes, but not their text/tail content or descendants. Instead, it will merge the text content and children of the element into its parent.

Tag names can contain wildcards as in _Element.iter.

Note that this will not delete the element (or ElementTree root element) that you passed even if it matches. It will only treat its descendants.

Example usage:

strip_tags(some_element,
    'simpletagname',             # non-namespaced tag
    '{http://some/ns}tagname',   # namespaced tag
    '{http://some/other/ns}*'    # any tag from a namespace
    Comment                      # comments (including their text!)
    )

tostring(element_or_tree, encoding=None, method="xml", xml_declaration=None, pretty_print=False, with_tail=True, standalone=None, doctype=None, exclusive=False, with_comments=True, inclusive_ns_prefixes=None)

 

Serialize an element to an encoded string representation of its XML tree.

Defaults to ASCII encoding without XML declaration. This behaviour can be configured with the keyword arguments 'encoding' (string) and 'xml_declaration' (bool). Note that changing the encoding to a non UTF-8 compatible encoding will enable a declaration by default.

You can also serialise to a Unicode string without declaration by passing the unicode function as encoding (or str in Py3), or the name 'unicode'. This changes the return value from a byte string to an unencoded unicode string.

The keyword argument 'pretty_print' (bool) enables formatted XML.

The keyword argument 'method' selects the output method: 'xml', 'html', plain 'text' (text content without tags) or 'c14n'. Default is 'xml'.

The exclusive and with_comments arguments are only used with C14N output, where they request exclusive and uncommented C14N serialisation respectively.

Passing a boolean value to the standalone option will output an XML declaration with the corresponding standalone flag.

The doctype option allows passing in a plain string that will be serialised before the XML tree. Note that passing in non well-formed content here will make the XML output non well-formed. Also, an existing doctype in the document tree will not be removed when serialising an ElementTree instance.

You can prevent the tail text of the element from being serialised by passing the boolean with_tail option. This has no impact on the tail text of children, which will always be serialised.

tostringlist(element_or_tree, *args, **kwargs)

 

Serialize an element to an encoded string representation of its XML tree, stored in a list of partial strings.

This is purely for ElementTree 1.3 compatibility. The result is a single string wrapped in a list.

tounicode(element_or_tree, method="xml", pretty_print=False, with_tail=True, doctype=None)

 

Serialize an element to the Python unicode representation of its XML tree.

Note that the result does not carry an XML encoding declaration and is therefore not necessarily suited for serialization to byte streams without further treatment.

The boolean keyword argument 'pretty_print' enables formatted XML.

The keyword argument 'method' selects the output method: 'xml', 'html' or plain 'text'.

You can prevent the tail text of the element from being serialised by passing the boolean with_tail option. This has no impact on the tail text of children, which will always be serialised.

Deprecated: use tostring(el, encoding=unicode) instead.

use_global_python_log(log)

 

Replace the global error log by an etree.PyErrorLog that uses the standard Python logging package.

Note that this disables access to the global error log from exceptions. Parsers, XSLT etc. will continue to provide their normal local error log.

Note: prior to lxml 2.2, this changed the error log globally. Since lxml 2.2, the global error log is local to a thread and this function will only set the global error log of the current thread.


Variables Details [hide private]

__pyx_capi__

Value:
{'appendChild': <capsule object "void (struct LxmlElement *, struct Lx\
mlElement *)" at 0x1e4be10>,
 'attributeValue': <capsule object "PyObject *(xmlNode *, xmlAttr *)" \
at 0x1e4bae0>,
 'attributeValueFromNsName': <capsule object "PyObject *(xmlNode *, co\
nst xmlChar *, const xmlChar *)" at 0x1e4bb10>,
 'callLookupFallback': <capsule object "PyObject *(struct LxmlFallback\
ElementClassLookup *, struct LxmlDocument *, xmlNode *)" at 0x1e4b7b0>\
...

__test__

Value:
{u'XML (line 2951)': u'''XML(text, parser=None, base_url=None)

    Parses an XML document or fragment from a string constant.
    Returns the root node (or the result returned by a parser target).
    This function can be used to embed "XML literals" in Python code,
    like in

       >>> root = etree.XML("<root><test/></root>")
...