Python 3.6.5 Documentation >  "xml.etree.ElementTree" — The ElementTree XML API

"xml.etree.ElementTree" — The ElementTree XML API
*************************************************

**Source code:** Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py

======================================================================

The "xml.etree.ElementTree" module implements a simple and efficient
API for parsing and creating XML data.

Changed in version 3.3: This module will use a fast implementation
whenever available. The "xml.etree.cElementTree" module is deprecated.

Warning: The "xml.etree.ElementTree" module is not secure against
maliciously constructed data. If you need to parse untrusted or
unauthenticated data see XML vulnerabilities.

Tutorial
========

This is a short tutorial for using "xml.etree.ElementTree" ("ET" in
short). The goal is to demonstrate some of the building blocks and
basic concepts of the module.

XML tree and elements
---------------------

XML is an inherently hierarchical data format, and the most natural
way to represent it is with a tree. "ET" has two classes for this
purpose - "ElementTree" represents the whole XML document as a tree,
and "Element" represents a single node in this tree. Interactions
with the whole document (reading and writing to/from files) are
usually done on the "ElementTree" level. Interactions with a single
XML element and its sub-elements are done on the "Element" level.

Parsing XML
-----------

We’ll be using the following XML document as the sample data for this
section:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank>1</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank>4</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank>68</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>

We can import this data by reading from a file:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('country_data.xml')
root = tree.getroot()

Or directly from a string:

root = ET.fromstring(country_data_as_string)

"fromstring()" parses XML from a string directly into an "Element",
which is the root element of the parsed tree. Other parsing functions
may create an "ElementTree". Check the documentation to be sure.

As an "Element", "root" has a tag and a dictionary of attributes:

>>> root.tag
'data'
>>> root.attrib
{}

It also has children nodes over which we can iterate:

>>> for child in root:
... print(child.tag, child.attrib)
...
country {'name': 'Liechtenstein'}
country {'name': 'Singapore'}
country {'name': 'Panama'}

Children are nested, and we can access specific child nodes by index:

>>> root[0][1].text
'2008'

Note: Not all elements of the XML input will end up as elements of
the parsed tree. Currently, this module skips over any XML comments,
processing instructions, and document type declarations in the
input. Nevertheless, trees built using this module’s API rather than
parsing from XML text can have comments and processing instructions
in them; they will be included when generating XML output. A
document type declaration may be accessed by passing a custom
"TreeBuilder" instance to the "XMLParser" constructor.

Pull API for non-blocking parsing
---------------------------------

Most parsing functions provided by this module require the whole
document to be read at once before returning any result. It is
possible to use an "XMLParser" and feed data into it incrementally,
but it is a push API that calls methods on a callback target, which is
too low-level and inconvenient for most needs. Sometimes what the
user really wants is to be able to parse XML incrementally, without
blocking operations, while enjoying the convenience of fully
constructed "Element" objects.

The most powerful tool for doing this is "XMLPullParser". It does not
require a blocking read to obtain the XML data, and is instead fed
with data incrementally with "XMLPullParser.feed()" calls. To get the
parsed XML elements, call "XMLPullParser.read_events()". Here is an
example:

>>> parser = ET.XMLPullParser(['start', 'end'])
>>> parser.feed('<mytag>sometext')
>>> list(parser.read_events())
[('start', <Element 'mytag' at 0x7fa66db2be58>)]
>>> parser.feed(' more text</mytag>')
>>> for event, elem in parser.read_events():
... print(event)
... print(elem.tag, 'text=', elem.text)
...
end

The obvious use case is applications that operate in a non-blocking
fashion where the XML data is being received from a socket or read
incrementally from some storage device. In such cases, blocking reads
are unacceptable.

Because it’s so flexible, "XMLPullParser" can be inconvenient to use
for simpler use-cases. If you don’t mind your application blocking on
reading XML data but would still like to have incremental parsing
capabilities, take a look at "iterparse()". It can be useful when
you’re reading a large XML document and don’t want to hold it wholly
in memory.

Finding interesting elements
----------------------------

"Element" has some useful methods that help iterate recursively over
all the sub-tree below it (its children, their children, and so on).
For example, "Element.iter()":

>>> for neighbor in root.iter('neighbor'):
... print(neighbor.attrib)
...
{'name': 'Austria', 'direction': 'E'}
{'name': 'Switzerland', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Malaysia', 'direction': 'N'}
{'name': 'Costa Rica', 'direction': 'W'}
{'name': 'Colombia', 'direction': 'E'}

"Element.findall()" finds only elements with a tag which are direct
children of the current element. "Element.find()" finds the *first*
child with a particular tag, and "Element.text" accesses the element’s
text content. "Element.get()" accesses the element’s attributes:

>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = country.find('rank').text
... name = country.get('name')
... print(name, rank)
...
Liechtenstein 1
Singapore 4
Panama 68

More sophisticated specification of which elements to look for is
possible by using XPath.

Modifying an XML File
---------------------

"ElementTree" provides a simple way to build XML documents and write
them to files. The "ElementTree.write()" method serves this purpose.

Once created, an "Element" object may be manipulated by directly
changing its fields (such as "Element.text"), adding and modifying
attributes ("Element.set()" method), as well as adding new children
(for example with "Element.append()").

Let’s say we want to add one to each country’s rank, and add an
"updated" attribute to the rank element:

>>> for rank in root.iter('rank'):
... new_rank = int(rank.text) + 1
... rank.text = str(new_rank)
... rank.set('updated', 'yes')
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')

Our XML now looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
<country name="Panama">
<rank updated="yes">69</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>13600</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
<neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
</country>
</data>

We can remove elements using "Element.remove()". Let’s say we want to
remove all countries with a rank higher than 50:

>>> for country in root.findall('country'):
... rank = int(country.find('rank').text)
... if rank > 50:
... root.remove(country)
...
>>> tree.write('output.xml')

Our XML now looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
<country name="Liechtenstein">
<rank updated="yes">2</rank>
<year>2008</year>
<gdppc>141100</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
<neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
</country>
<country name="Singapore">
<rank updated="yes">5</rank>
<year>2011</year>
<gdppc>59900</gdppc>
<neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
</country>
</data>

Building XML documents
----------------------

The "SubElement()" function also provides a convenient way to create
new sub-elements for a given element:

>>> a = ET.Element('a')
>>> b = ET.SubElement(a, 'b')
>>> c = ET.SubElement(a, 'c')
>>> d = ET.SubElement(c, 'd')
>>> ET.dump(a)
<a><b /><c><d /></c></a>

Parsing XML with Namespaces
---------------------------

If the XML input has namespaces, tags and attributes with prefixes in
the form "prefix:sometag" get expanded to "{uri}sometag" where the
*prefix* is replaced by the full *URI*. Also, if there is a default
namespace, that full URI gets prepended to all of the non-prefixed
tags.

Here is an XML example that incorporates two namespaces, one with the
prefix “fictional” and the other serving as the default namespace:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<actors xmlns:fictional="http://characters.example.com"
xmlns="http://people.example.com">
<actor>
<name>John Cleese</name>
<fictional:character>Lancelot</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Archie Leach</fictional:character>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Eric Idle</name>
<fictional:character>Sir Robin</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Gunther</fictional:character>
<fictional:character>Commander Clement</fictional:character>
</actor>
</actors>

One way to search and explore this XML example is to manually add the
URI to every tag or attribute in the xpath of a "find()" or
"findall()":

root = fromstring(xml_text)
for actor in root.findall('{http://people.example.com}actor'):
name = actor.find('{http://people.example.com}name')
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('{http://characters.example.com}character'):
print(' |-->', char.text)

A better way to search the namespaced XML example is to create a
dictionary with your own prefixes and use those in the search
functions:

ns = {'real_person': 'http://people.example.com',
'role': 'http://characters.example.com'}

for actor in root.findall('real_person:actor', ns):
name = actor.find('real_person:name', ns)
print(name.text)
for char in actor.findall('role:character', ns):
print(' |-->', char.text)

These two approaches both output:

John Cleese
|--> Lancelot
|--> Archie Leach
Eric Idle
|--> Sir Robin
|--> Gunther
|--> Commander Clement

Additional resources
--------------------

See http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm for tutorials and links
to other docs.

XPath support
=============

This module provides limited support for XPath expressions for
locating elements in a tree. The goal is to support a small subset of
the abbreviated syntax; a full XPath engine is outside the scope of
the module.

Example
-------

Here’s an example that demonstrates some of the XPath capabilities of
the module. We’ll be using the "countrydata" XML document from the
Parsing XML section:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.fromstring(countrydata)

# Top-level elements
root.findall(".")

# All 'neighbor' grand-children of 'country' children of the top-level
# elements
root.findall("./country/neighbor")

# Nodes with name='Singapore' that have a 'year' child
root.findall(".//year/..[@name='Singapore']")

# 'year' nodes that are children of nodes with name='Singapore'
root.findall(".//*[@name='Singapore']/year")

# All 'neighbor' nodes that are the second child of their parent
root.findall(".//neighbor[2]")

Supported XPath syntax
----------------------

+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Syntax | Meaning |
+=========================+========================================================+
| "tag" | Selects all child elements with the given tag. For |
| | example, "spam" selects all child elements named |
| | "spam", and "spam/egg" selects all grandchildren named |
| | "egg" in all children named "spam". |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "*" | Selects all child elements. For example, "*/egg" |
| | selects all grandchildren named "egg". |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "." | Selects the current node. This is mostly useful at |
| | the beginning of the path, to indicate that it’s a |
| | relative path. |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "//" | Selects all subelements, on all levels beneath the |
| | current element. For example, ".//egg" selects all |
| | "egg" elements in the entire tree. |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| ".." | Selects the parent element. Returns "None" if the |
| | path attempts to reach the ancestors of the start |
| | element (the element "find" was called on). |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "[@attrib]" | Selects all elements that have the given attribute. |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "[@attrib='value']" | Selects all elements for which the given attribute has |
| | the given value. The value cannot contain quotes. |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "[tag]" | Selects all elements that have a child named "tag". |
| | Only immediate children are supported. |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "[tag='text']" | Selects all elements that have a child named "tag" |
| | whose complete text content, including descendants, |
| | equals the given "text". |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "[position]" | Selects all elements that are located at the given |
| | position. The position can be either an integer (1 is |
| | the first position), the expression "last()" (for the |
| | last position), or a position relative to the last |
| | position (e.g. "last()-1"). |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+

Predicates (expressions within square brackets) must be preceded by a
tag name, an asterisk, or another predicate. "position" predicates
must be preceded by a tag name.

Reference
=========

Functions
---------

xml.etree.ElementTree.Comment(text=None)

Comment element factory. This factory function creates a special
element that will be serialized as an XML comment by the standard
serializer. The comment string can be either a bytestring or a
Unicode string. *text* is a string containing the comment string.
Returns an element instance representing a comment.

Note that "XMLParser" skips over comments in the input instead of
creating comment objects for them. An "ElementTree" will only
contain comment nodes if they have been inserted into to the tree
using one of the "Element" methods.

xml.etree.ElementTree.dump(elem)

Writes an element tree or element structure to sys.stdout. This
function should be used for debugging only.

The exact output format is implementation dependent. In this
version, it’s written as an ordinary XML file.

*elem* is an element tree or an individual element.

xml.etree.ElementTree.fromstring(text)

Parses an XML section from a string constant. Same as "XML()".
*text* is a string containing XML data. Returns an "Element"
instance.

xml.etree.ElementTree.fromstringlist(sequence, parser=None)

Parses an XML document from a sequence of string fragments.
*sequence* is a list or other sequence containing XML data
fragments. *parser* is an optional parser instance. If not given,
the standard "XMLParser" parser is used. Returns an "Element"
instance.

New in version 3.2.

xml.etree.ElementTree.iselement(element)

Checks if an object appears to be a valid element object.
*element* is an element instance. Returns a true value if this is
an element object.

xml.etree.ElementTree.iterparse(source, events=None, parser=None)

Parses an XML section into an element tree incrementally, and
reports what’s going on to the user. *source* is a filename or
*file object* containing XML data. *events* is a sequence of
events to report back. The supported events are the strings
""start"", ""end"", ""start-ns"" and ""end-ns"" (the “ns” events
are used to get detailed namespace information). If *events* is
omitted, only ""end"" events are reported. *parser* is an optional
parser instance. If not given, the standard "XMLParser" parser is
used. *parser* must be a subclass of "XMLParser" and can only use
the default "TreeBuilder" as a target. Returns an *iterator*
providing "(event, elem)" pairs.

Note that while "iterparse()" builds the tree incrementally, it
issues blocking reads on *source* (or the file it names). As such,
it’s unsuitable for applications where blocking reads can’t be
made. For fully non-blocking parsing, see "XMLPullParser".

Note: "iterparse()" only guarantees that it has seen the “>”
character of a starting tag when it emits a “start” event, so the
attributes are defined, but the contents of the text and tail
attributes are undefined at that point. The same applies to the
element children; they may or may not be present.If you need a
fully populated element, look for “end” events instead.

Deprecated since version 3.4: The *parser* argument.

xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(source, parser=None)

Parses an XML section into an element tree. *source* is a filename
or file object containing XML data. *parser* is an optional parser
instance. If not given, the standard "XMLParser" parser is used.
Returns an "ElementTree" instance.

xml.etree.ElementTree.ProcessingInstruction(target, text=None)

PI element factory. This factory function creates a special
element that will be serialized as an XML processing instruction.
*target* is a string containing the PI target. *text* is a string
containing the PI contents, if given. Returns an element instance,
representing a processing instruction.

Note that "XMLParser" skips over processing instructions in the
input instead of creating comment objects for them. An
"ElementTree" will only contain processing instruction nodes if
they have been inserted into to the tree using one of the "Element"
methods.

xml.etree.ElementTree.register_namespace(prefix, uri)

Registers a namespace prefix. The registry is global, and any
existing mapping for either the given prefix or the namespace URI
will be removed. *prefix* is a namespace prefix. *uri* is a
namespace uri. Tags and attributes in this namespace will be
serialized with the given prefix, if at all possible.

New in version 3.2.

xml.etree.ElementTree.SubElement(parent, tag, attrib={}, **extra)

Subelement factory. This function creates an element instance, and
appends it to an existing element.

The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be
either bytestrings or Unicode strings. *parent* is the parent
element. *tag* is the subelement name. *attrib* is an optional
dictionary, containing element attributes. *extra* contains
additional attributes, given as keyword arguments. Returns an
element instance.

xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)

Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. *element* is an "Element" instance. *encoding* [1]
is the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use
"encoding="unicode"" to generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a
bytestring is generated). *method* is either ""xml"", ""html"" or
""text"" (default is ""xml""). *short_empty_elements* has the same
meaning as in "ElementTree.write()". Returns an (optionally)
encoded string containing the XML data.

New in version 3.4: The *short_empty_elements* parameter.

xml.etree.ElementTree.tostringlist(element, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)

Generates a string representation of an XML element, including all
subelements. *element* is an "Element" instance. *encoding* [1]
is the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use
"encoding="unicode"" to generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a
bytestring is generated). *method* is either ""xml"", ""html"" or
""text"" (default is ""xml""). *short_empty_elements* has the same
meaning as in "ElementTree.write()". Returns a list of (optionally)
encoded strings containing the XML data. It does not guarantee any
specific sequence, except that "b"".join(tostringlist(element)) ==
tostring(element)".

New in version 3.2.

New in version 3.4: The *short_empty_elements* parameter.

xml.etree.ElementTree.XML(text, parser=None)

Parses an XML section from a string constant. This function can be
used to embed “XML literals” in Python code. *text* is a string
containing XML data. *parser* is an optional parser instance. If
not given, the standard "XMLParser" parser is used. Returns an
"Element" instance.

xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLID(text, parser=None)

Parses an XML section from a string constant, and also returns a
dictionary which maps from element id:s to elements. *text* is a
string containing XML data. *parser* is an optional parser
instance. If not given, the standard "XMLParser" parser is used.
Returns a tuple containing an "Element" instance and a dictionary.

Element Objects
---------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.Element(tag, attrib={}, **extra)

Element class. This class defines the Element interface, and
provides a reference implementation of this interface.

The element name, attribute names, and attribute values can be
either bytestrings or Unicode strings. *tag* is the element name.
*attrib* is an optional dictionary, containing element attributes.
*extra* contains additional attributes, given as keyword arguments.

tag

A string identifying what kind of data this element represents
(the element type, in other words).

text
tail

These attributes can be used to hold additional data associated
with the element. Their values are usually strings but may be
any application-specific object. If the element is created from
an XML file, the *text* attribute holds either the text between
the element’s start tag and its first child or end tag, or
"None", and the *tail* attribute holds either the text between
the element’s end tag and the next tag, or "None". For the XML
data

<a><b>1<c>2<d/>3</c></b>4</a>

the *a* element has "None" for both *text* and *tail*
attributes, the *b* element has *text* ""1"" and *tail* ""4"",
the *c* element has *text* ""2"" and *tail* "None", and the *d*
element has *text* "None" and *tail* ""3"".

To collect the inner text of an element, see "itertext()", for
example """.join(element.itertext())".

Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.

attrib

A dictionary containing the element’s attributes. Note that
while the *attrib* value is always a real mutable Python
dictionary, an ElementTree implementation may choose to use
another internal representation, and create the dictionary only
if someone asks for it. To take advantage of such
implementations, use the dictionary methods below whenever
possible.

The following dictionary-like methods work on the element
attributes.

clear()

Resets an element. This function removes all subelements,
clears all attributes, and sets the text and tail attributes to
"None".

get(key, default=None)

Gets the element attribute named *key*.

Returns the attribute value, or *default* if the attribute was
not found.

items()

Returns the element attributes as a sequence of (name, value)
pairs. The attributes are returned in an arbitrary order.

keys()

Returns the elements attribute names as a list. The names are
returned in an arbitrary order.

set(key, value)

Set the attribute *key* on the element to *value*.

The following methods work on the element’s children (subelements).

append(subelement)

Adds the element *subelement* to the end of this element’s
internal list of subelements. Raises "TypeError" if
*subelement* is not an "Element".

extend(subelements)

Appends *subelements* from a sequence object with zero or more
elements. Raises "TypeError" if a subelement is not an
"Element".

New in version 3.2.

find(match, namespaces=None)

Finds the first subelement matching *match*. *match* may be a
tag name or a path. Returns an element instance or "None".
*namespaces* is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to
full name.

findall(match, namespaces=None)

Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or path. Returns a
list containing all matching elements in document order.
*namespaces* is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to
full name.

findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)

Finds text for the first subelement matching *match*. *match*
may be a tag name or a path. Returns the text content of the
first matching element, or *default* if no element was found.
Note that if the matching element has no text content an empty
string is returned. *namespaces* is an optional mapping from
namespace prefix to full name.

getchildren()

Deprecated since version 3.2: Use "list(elem)" or iteration.

getiterator(tag=None)

Deprecated since version 3.2: Use method "Element.iter()"
instead.

insert(index, subelement)

Inserts *subelement* at the given position in this element.
Raises "TypeError" if *subelement* is not an "Element".

iter(tag=None)

Creates a tree *iterator* with the current element as the root.
The iterator iterates over this element and all elements below
it, in document (depth first) order. If *tag* is not "None" or
"'*'", only elements whose tag equals *tag* are returned from
the iterator. If the tree structure is modified during
iteration, the result is undefined.

New in version 3.2.

iterfind(match, namespaces=None)

Finds all matching subelements, by tag name or path. Returns an
iterable yielding all matching elements in document order.
*namespaces* is an optional mapping from namespace prefix to
full name.

New in version 3.2.

itertext()

Creates a text iterator. The iterator loops over this element
and all subelements, in document order, and returns all inner
text.

New in version 3.2.

makeelement(tag, attrib)

Creates a new element object of the same type as this element.
Do not call this method, use the "SubElement()" factory function
instead.

remove(subelement)

Removes *subelement* from the element. Unlike the find* methods
this method compares elements based on the instance identity,
not on tag value or contents.

"Element" objects also support the following sequence type methods
for working with subelements: "__delitem__()", "__getitem__()",
"__setitem__()", "__len__()".

Caution: Elements with no subelements will test as "False". This
behavior will change in future versions. Use specific "len(elem)"
or "elem is None" test instead.

element = root.find('foo')

if not element: # careful!
print("element not found, or element has no subelements")

if element is None:
print("element not found")

ElementTree Objects
-------------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.ElementTree(element=None, file=None)

ElementTree wrapper class. This class represents an entire element
hierarchy, and adds some extra support for serialization to and
from standard XML.

*element* is the root element. The tree is initialized with the
contents of the XML *file* if given.

_setroot(element)

Replaces the root element for this tree. This discards the
current contents of the tree, and replaces it with the given
element. Use with care. *element* is an element instance.

find(match, namespaces=None)

Same as "Element.find()", starting at the root of the tree.

findall(match, namespaces=None)

Same as "Element.findall()", starting at the root of the tree.

findtext(match, default=None, namespaces=None)

Same as "Element.findtext()", starting at the root of the tree.

getiterator(tag=None)

Deprecated since version 3.2: Use method "ElementTree.iter()"
instead.

getroot()

Returns the root element for this tree.

iter(tag=None)

Creates and returns a tree iterator for the root element. The
iterator loops over all elements in this tree, in section order.
*tag* is the tag to look for (default is to return all
elements).

iterfind(match, namespaces=None)

Same as "Element.iterfind()", starting at the root of the tree.

New in version 3.2.

parse(source, parser=None)

Loads an external XML section into this element tree. *source*
is a file name or *file object*. *parser* is an optional parser
instance. If not given, the standard "XMLParser" parser is used.
Returns the section root element.

write(file, encoding="us-ascii", xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)

Writes the element tree to a file, as XML. *file* is a file
name, or a *file object* opened for writing. *encoding* [1] is
the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). *xml_declaration*
controls if an XML declaration should be added to the file. Use
"False" for never, "True" for always, "None" for only if not US-
ASCII or UTF-8 or Unicode (default is "None").
*default_namespace* sets the default XML namespace (for
“xmlns”). *method* is either ""xml"", ""html"" or ""text""
(default is ""xml""). The keyword-only *short_empty_elements*
parameter controls the formatting of elements that contain no
content. If "True" (the default), they are emitted as a single
self-closed tag, otherwise they are emitted as a pair of
start/end tags.

The output is either a string ("str") or binary ("bytes"). This
is controlled by the *encoding* argument. If *encoding* is
""unicode"", the output is a string; otherwise, it’s binary.
Note that this may conflict with the type of *file* if it’s an
open *file object*; make sure you do not try to write a string
to a binary stream and vice versa.

New in version 3.4: The *short_empty_elements* parameter.

This is the XML file that is going to be manipulated:

<html>
<head>
<title>Example page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Moved to <a href="http://example.org/">example.org</a>
or <a href="http://example.com/">example.com</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

Example of changing the attribute “target” of every link in first
paragraph:

>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree
>>> tree = ElementTree()
>>> tree.parse("index.xhtml")
<Element 'html' at 0xb77e6fac>
>>> p = tree.find("body/p") # Finds first occurrence of tag p in body
>>> p
<Element 'p' at 0xb77ec26c>
>>> links = list(p.iter("a")) # Returns list of all links
>>> links
[<Element 'a' at 0xb77ec2ac>, <Element 'a' at 0xb77ec1cc>]
>>> for i in links: # Iterates through all found links
... i.attrib["target"] = "blank"
>>> tree.write("output.xhtml")

QName Objects
-------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.QName(text_or_uri, tag=None)

QName wrapper. This can be used to wrap a QName attribute value,
in order to get proper namespace handling on output. *text_or_uri*
is a string containing the QName value, in the form {uri}local, or,
if the tag argument is given, the URI part of a QName. If *tag* is
given, the first argument is interpreted as a URI, and this
argument is interpreted as a local name. "QName" instances are
opaque.

TreeBuilder Objects
-------------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.TreeBuilder(element_factory=None)

Generic element structure builder. This builder converts a
sequence of start, data, and end method calls to a well-formed
element structure. You can use this class to build an element
structure using a custom XML parser, or a parser for some other
XML-like format. *element_factory*, when given, must be a callable
accepting two positional arguments: a tag and a dict of attributes.
It is expected to return a new element instance.

close()

Flushes the builder buffers, and returns the toplevel document
element. Returns an "Element" instance.

data(data)

Adds text to the current element. *data* is a string. This
should be either a bytestring, or a Unicode string.

end(tag)

Closes the current element. *tag* is the element name. Returns
the closed element.

start(tag, attrs)

Opens a new element. *tag* is the element name. *attrs* is a
dictionary containing element attributes. Returns the opened
element.

In addition, a custom "TreeBuilder" object can provide the
following method:

doctype(name, pubid, system)

Handles a doctype declaration. *name* is the doctype name.
*pubid* is the public identifier. *system* is the system
identifier. This method does not exist on the default
"TreeBuilder" class.

New in version 3.2.

XMLParser Objects
-----------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLParser(html=0, target=None, encoding=None)

This class is the low-level building block of the module. It uses
"xml.parsers.expat" for efficient, event-based parsing of XML. It
can be fed XML data incrementally with the "feed()" method, and
parsing events are translated to a push API - by invoking callbacks
on the *target* object. If *target* is omitted, the standard
"TreeBuilder" is used. The *html* argument was historically used
for backwards compatibility and is now deprecated. If *encoding*
[1] is given, the value overrides the encoding specified in the XML
file.

Deprecated since version 3.4: The *html* argument. The remaining
arguments should be passed via keyword to prepare for the removal
of the *html* argument.

close()

Finishes feeding data to the parser. Returns the result of
calling the "close()" method of the *target* passed during
construction; by default, this is the toplevel document element.

doctype(name, pubid, system)

Deprecated since version 3.2: Define the "TreeBuilder.doctype()"
method on a custom TreeBuilder target.

feed(data)

Feeds data to the parser. *data* is encoded data.

"XMLParser.feed()" calls *target*’s "start(tag, attrs_dict)" method
for each opening tag, its "end(tag)" method for each closing tag,
and data is processed by method "data(data)". "XMLParser.close()"
calls *target*’s method "close()". "XMLParser" can be used not only
for building a tree structure. This is an example of counting the
maximum depth of an XML file:

>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import XMLParser
>>> class MaxDepth: # The target object of the parser
... maxDepth = 0
... depth = 0
... def start(self, tag, attrib): # Called for each opening tag.
... self.depth += 1
... if self.depth > self.maxDepth:
... self.maxDepth = self.depth
... def end(self, tag): # Called for each closing tag.
... self.depth -= 1
... def data(self, data):
... pass # We do not need to do anything with data.
... def close(self): # Called when all data has been parsed.
... return self.maxDepth
...
>>> target = MaxDepth()
>>> parser = XMLParser(target=target)
>>> exampleXml = """
... <a>
... <b>
... </b>
... <b>
... <c>
... <d>
... </d>
... </c>
... </b>
... </a>"""
>>> parser.feed(exampleXml)
>>> parser.close()
4

XMLPullParser Objects
---------------------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.XMLPullParser(events=None)

A pull parser suitable for non-blocking applications. Its input-
side API is similar to that of "XMLParser", but instead of pushing
calls to a callback target, "XMLPullParser" collects an internal
list of parsing events and lets the user read from it. *events* is
a sequence of events to report back. The supported events are the
strings ""start"", ""end"", ""start-ns"" and ""end-ns"" (the “ns”
events are used to get detailed namespace information). If
*events* is omitted, only ""end"" events are reported.

feed(data)

Feed the given bytes data to the parser.

close()

Signal the parser that the data stream is terminated. Unlike
"XMLParser.close()", this method always returns "None". Any
events not yet retrieved when the parser is closed can still be
read with "read_events()".

read_events()

Return an iterator over the events which have been encountered
in the data fed to the parser. The iterator yields "(event,
elem)" pairs, where *event* is a string representing the type of
event (e.g. ""end"") and *elem* is the encountered "Element"
object.

Events provided in a previous call to "read_events()" will not
be yielded again. Events are consumed from the internal queue
only when they are retrieved from the iterator, so multiple
readers iterating in parallel over iterators obtained from
"read_events()" will have unpredictable results.

Note: "XMLPullParser" only guarantees that it has seen the “>”
character of a starting tag when it emits a “start” event, so the
attributes are defined, but the contents of the text and tail
attributes are undefined at that point. The same applies to the
element children; they may or may not be present.If you need a
fully populated element, look for “end” events instead.

New in version 3.4.

Exceptions
----------

class xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError

XML parse error, raised by the various parsing methods in this
module when parsing fails. The string representation of an
instance of this exception will contain a user-friendly error
message. In addition, it will have the following attributes
available:

code

A numeric error code from the expat parser. See the
documentation of "xml.parsers.expat" for the list of error codes
and their meanings.

position

A tuple of *line*, *column* numbers, specifying where the error
occurred.

-[ Footnotes ]-

[1] The encoding string included in XML output should conform to
the appropriate standards. For example, “UTF-8” is valid, but
“UTF8” is not. See https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-
xml11-20060816/#NT- EncodingDecl and
https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets /character-
sets.xhtml.