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I'm currently learning how to parse xml data using elementtree. I got an error that say:ParseError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 2.

My code is right below, and a bit of the xml data is after my code.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.fromstring("C:\pbc.xml")
root = tree.getroot()


for article in root.findall('article'):
    print ' '.join([t.text for t in pub.findall('title')])
    for author in article.findall('author'):
        print 'Author name: {}'.format(author.text)
    for journal in article.findall('journal'):  # all venue tags with id attribute
        print 'journal'

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE dblp SYSTEM "dblp.dtd">
<dblp>
<article mdate="2002-01-03" key="persons/Codd71a">
<author>E. F. Codd</author>
<title>Further Normalization of the Data Base Relational Model.</title>
<journal>IBM Research Report, San Jose, California</journal>
<volume>RJ909</volume>
<month>August</month>
<year>1971</year>
<cdrom>ibmTR/rj909.pdf</cdrom>
<ee>db/labs/ibm/RJ909.html</ee>
</article>

<article mdate="2002-01-03" key="persons/Hall74">
<author>Patrick A. V. Hall</author>
<title>Common Subexpression Identification in General Algebraic Systems.</title>
<journal>Technical Rep. UKSC 0060, IBM United Kingdom Scientific Centre</journal>
<month>November</month>
<year>1974</year>
</article>
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3 Answers 3

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You are using .fromstring() instead of .parse():

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("C:\pbc.xml")
root = tree.getroot()

.fromstring() expects to be given the XML data in a bytestring, not a filename.

If the document is really large (many megabytes or more) then you should use the ET.iterparse() function instead and clear elements you have processed:

for event, article in ET.iterparse('C:\\pbc.xml', tag='article'):
    for title in aarticle.findall('title'):
        print 'Title: {}'.format(title.txt)
    for author in article.findall('author'):
        print 'Author name: {}'.format(author.text)
    for journal in article.findall('journal'):
        print 'journal'

    article.clear()
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8 Comments

Hi Pieters, I used iterparse, as well as the code you put forward, however, I got the following error:ParseError: no element found: line 21, column 0.
@user2274879: Then there appears to be a problem with your input XML file. Use a XML validator to check for errors and fix them before trying to parse the file with Python.
Thanks a lot. I'll use xml validator to check for errors, however, the main xml data is extremely large.
@user2274879: Take the first 100 lines or so, making sure you get a complete XML document (make sure it has complete <article> elements and a closing </dblp> tag at the end).
<dblp> <article mdate="2002-01-03" key="persons/Tresch96"> <author>Markus Tresch</author> <title>Principles of Distributed Object Database Languages.</title> <journal>technical Report 248, ETH Z&uuml;rich, Dept. of Computer Science</journal> <month>July</month> <year>1996</year> </article> </dblp>
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with open("C:\pbc.xml", 'rb') as f:
    root = ET.fromstring(f.read().strip())

Unlike ET.parse, ET.fromstring expects a string with XML content, not the name of a file.

Also in contrast to ET.parse, ET.fromstring returns a root Element, not a Tree. So you should omit

root = tree.getroot()

Also, the XML snippet you posted needs a closing </dblp> to be parsable. I assume your real data has that closing tag...

The iterparse provided by xml.etree.ElementTree does not have a tag argument, although lxml.etree.iterparse does have a tag argument.

Try:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import htmlentitydefs

filename = "test.xml"
# http://stackoverflow.com/a/10792473/190597 (lambacck)
parser = ET.XMLParser()
parser.entity.update((x, unichr(i)) for x, i in htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint.iteritems())
context = ET.iterparse(filename, events = ('end', ), parser=parser)
for event, elem in context:
    if elem.tag == 'article':
        for author in elem.findall('author'):
            print 'Author name: {}'.format(author.text)
        for journal in elem.findall('journal'):  # all venue tags with id attribute
            print(journal.text)
        elem.clear()

Note: To use iterparse your XML must be valid, which means among other things that there can not be empty lines at the beginning of the file.

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21 Comments

Hi unutbu, I did exactly what you suggested and got the following error: ParseError: no element found: line 21, column 0.
Remove all empty lines from the beginning of the file, or else add .strip() to f.read() (see above.)
@user2274879: Your XML document is cut off; there should be more data beyond line 21, but if your XML document matches what you posted here exactly, then at least the </dblp> closing tag is missing.
@unutbu: It's line 21 that is the problem. The XML in the OP has no more than 21 lines, and it is missing data beyond that.
@MartijnPieters: The error you point out is correct, but not the immediate error the OP is experiencing. Notice that the error occurs on column 0, not column 10.
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You'd better not putting the meta-info of the xml file into the parser. The parser do well if the tags are well-closed. So the <?xml may not be recognized by the parser. So omit the first two lines and try again. :-)

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1 Comment

Hi Lichenbo, I removed the first two lines, and i still got the same error.

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