Python: namespaces in xml ElementTree (or lxml)

Question

I want to retrieve a legacy xml file, manipulate and save it.

Here is my code:

from xml.etree import cElementTree as ET
NS = \"{http://www.somedomain         


        

Answer 1

Have a look at the lxml tutorial section on namespaces. Also this article about namespaces in ElementTree.

Problem 1: Put up with it, like everybody else does. Instead of "%(ns)Event" % {'ns':NS } try NS+"Event".

Problem 2: By default, the XML declaration is written only if it is required. You can force it (lxml only) by using xml_declaration=True in your write() call.

Problem 3: The nsmap arg appears to be lxml-only. AFAICT it needs a MAPping, not a string. Try nsmap={None: NS}. The effbot article has a section describing a workaround for this.

Answer 2

To answer your questions in order:

• you can't just ignore the namespace, not in the path syntax that .findall() uses , but not in "real" xpath (supported by lxml) either: there you'd still be forced to use a prefix, and still need to provide some prefix-to-uri mapping.

• use xml_declaration=True as well as encoding='utf-8' with the .write() call (available in lxml, but in stdlib xml.etree only since python 2.7 I believe)

• I believe lxml will do behave like you want