Close a tag with no text in lxml

Question

I am trying to output a XML file using Python and lxml

However, I notice one thing that if a tag has no text, it does not close itself. An example of this would be:<

Answer 1

To clarify @ymv answer in case it might be of help to others:

from lxml import etree

root = etree.Element('document')
rootTree = etree.ElementTree(root)
firstChild = etree.SubElement(root, 'test')

print(etree.tostring(root, method='html'))
### b'<document><test></test></document>'

Answer 2

Use lxml.html.tostring to serialize to HTML

import lxml.html
root = lxml.html.fromstring(mydocument)
print(lxml.html.tostring(root))

Answer 3

Use empty string '' like this:

root = etree.Element('document')
etree.SubElement(root, 'test').text = ''

Answer 4

Note that <test></test> and <test/> mean exactly the same thing. What you want is for the test-tag to actually do have a text that consists in a single linebreak. However, an empty tag with no text is usually written as <test/> and it makes very little sense to insist on it to appear as <test></test>.