Python ElementTree won't convert non-breaking spaces when using UTF-8 for output

Question

I\'m trying to parse, manipulate, and output HTML using Python\'s ElementTree:

import sys
from cStringIO  import StringIO
from xml.etree  import ElementTree as E         


        

Answer 1

XML only defines <, >, ', " and &.   and others come from HTML. So you have a couple of choices.

1. You can change your source to use numeric entities, like   or   both of which are equivalent to  .
2. You can use a DTD which defines those values.

There is some useful information (it is written about XSLT, but XSLT is written using XML, so the same applies) at the XSLT FAQ.

---

The question appears now to include a stack trace; that changes things. Are you sure that the string is in UTF-8? If it resolves to the single byte 0xA0, then it isn't UTF-8 but more likely cp1252 or iso-8859-1.