python xml library with similar functionality to json library

Question

Python has a json library where you can do json.loads(s) to load json into a python data structure consisting of lists and maps. Is there something equivalent for xml? All the xml libraries I've seen map to a DOM where you have to know special API functions, which is IMO less easy to work with.

That would require XML to have a reasonable mapping into Python core types. It doesn't. — Amber
– Amber, Commented May 1, 2012 at 22:13

Gareth Latty · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-01 22:14:22Z

2

No, on the simple note that JSON objects directly translate to Python objects. How do you turn XML into Python - the answer is the DOM.

There are, however, simpler ways to work with XML. The best, in my opinion, for ease of use, is xml.etree.ElementTree, which allows you to iterate through the elements of the XML and create a tree, which is pretty easy to work with comparable with other ways of getting at XML data.

answered May 1, 2012 at 22:14

Gareth Latty

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3 Comments

Charles Duffy Over a year ago

I'd generally agree with this, but note that lxml.etree (see lxml.de) is well worthwhile -- having true XPath support, XSLT, and many other goodies while retaining etree's ease-of-use.

Gareth Latty Over a year ago

@CharlesDuffy Indeed, if you need that functionality, lxml is a great library - for simpler uses, I generally find the standard library suffices.

Kevin Over a year ago

I ended up using xml.etree.ElementTree. Thanks.

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